It’s easy to think of sex comedies as lazy gag-fests with raunchy jokes and insipid characters. That doesn’t mean it’s always wrong. It’s just easy. But in actuality, it’s hard to make a great sex comedy. You try finding the real humor in intimate physical relations while also reflecting society’s conflicting attitudes about the subject.
Sex comedies frequently depict a struggle between progressive and regressive attitudes about the human body, a topic that can sometimes be funny and sometimes force us to confront uncomfortable realities about oppression, repression and shame. But yeah, also there are gags about bodily fluids going every which way, which is exactly how Sara Zandieh’s “Doin’ It” begins.
The film tells the story of Maya (Lilly Singh), who was publicly humiliated by an anatomical function gone wrong at a school talent show. As such, Maya’s mother (Sonia Dhillon Tully) whisked her away to India so she could learn “proper” values. Now, Maya’s 30 years old and still a virgin, which makes it kinda awkward when she returns to America and gets a job teaching sex ed to teenagers.
The irony of a virgin teaching sexual education sounds a lot funnier on paper than it would be if it actually played out, since if you’ve ever taken a sex ed class, you’d know that teachers don’t — or at least, they shouldn’t — tell their students a whole bunch of deeply personal anecdotes. So if Maya followed the school’s conservative, abstinence-only curriculum, it never would’ve been an issue in “Doin’ It” either. But Maya takes this opportunity to revise the lesson plan and promote sex positivity. Which she would absolutely get in trouble for, whether it was a brilliant new lesson plan or not. And probably not.
She assigns masturbation as homework. She should have known the school board was going to have a meeting about that.
That’s the real issue with “Doin’ It.” It’s not that the movie isn’t funny (although “funny” isn’t the best word to describe it), it’s that it has genuine ambitions about changing the conversation about sex, but it’s not making coherent arguments. A lot of people would agree with the movie’s thesis, that sex education — particularly fear-mongering sex education, which doesn’t involve a lot of the “education” part — could use serious reform; not just in this country, but throughout much of the world. But dedicating a whole school day to female ejaculation, using Super Soakers as a visual aid, works a little better as a joke than as a policy proposal. And it’s not a particularly inspired joke.
When “Doin’ It” isn’t trying to have a meaningful conversation about sex, it’s a fairly standard late-bloomer relationship comedy, in which Maya’s best friend (Sabrina Jalees) tries to catch her up on the erotic experimentation and high school shenanigans she missed. Also, Maya pursues a serious relationship with another teacher, Alex (Trevor Salter), and tries to get her mother to date the cute guy next door. Stephanie Beatriz shows up as the school lunch lady, and she’s almost exclusively there to be comic relief, which you probably shouldn’t need this much in a comedy.
Conventional though it often is, there are moments when “Doin’ It” is, perhaps not incredible, but incredibly weird. There’s a gag towards the end where Jalees goes off on a brief comic rant, and instead of the camera staying in the room with her, the film gradually takes us to outer space while she’s talking — and I have no idea what that means. This is a film where somebody accidentally licks a vibrator, so I wasn’t expecting pure cinematic abstraction to turn up in the last five minutes. But hey, they got my attention with it, I can’t deny that.
“Doin’ It” isn’t a great sex comedy. I don’t think I’d even call it a good one, so I won’t. But it sure as hell isn’t lazy. Noble intentions are splattered all over the walls, and the overall message isn’t in dispute. But in trying so hard to have a real, thoughtful message, Sara Zandieh — who co-wrote the screenplay with Singh and Neel Patel — makes it harder to get away with the film’s multiple, comically irresponsible jokes. And those jokes frequently undercut the film’s actual point, sabotaging the mature discussion about sex ed the film desperately tries to endorse. Maybe it’s too smart to make those easy jokes. Maybe it’s too silly to make those intelligent points. But whatever “Doin’ It” is doin’, it could be doin’ it better.
“Doin’ It’ is now playing in select theaters.
