Teen sex no longer the shocker it once was

After ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ dominated the box office for two consecutive weeks, this weekend… After ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ dominated the box office for two consecutive weeks, this weekend was the time to crown a new king of mediocrity. The contenders? ‘Max Payne,’ the video game adaptation starring Mark Wahlberg, and ‘Sex Drive,’ a comedy presumably about some combination of sex acts and automated locomotion. ‘ ‘ ‘ Only one could dethrone Drew Barrymore as a talking chihuahua, though, and ‘Max Payne’ won the title with the star power of Mark Wahlberg and a veritable funky bunch of supporting players. ‘ ‘ ‘ The teen-sex comedy ‘Sex Drive,’ on the other hand, opened in ninth place this weekend, earning less than the five week-old ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.’ Ladies, gentlemen. The teen-sex comedy has died. ‘ ‘ ‘ Teen sex, we knew ye well. But your time has come ‘mdash; there’s just no place for you anymore. From the moment we watched Porky’s sink into the swamp to the time Jason Biggs had sex with a pastry, teen sex has been the genre for dirty, felonious laughs. How could it fizzle out like this, to be defeated now by a talking dog and a video game? ‘ ‘ ‘ I blame society. No, seriously. Think back to when you were a teen. Not even, maybe ‘mdash; odds are good that you were barely a teenager when ‘American Pie’ came out, and if you weren’t a virgin, well hey, good for you. Point is, if you wanted some birds and bees edutainment, film was the place to go. Teen sex on TV was relatively tame ‘mdash; remember ‘Dawson’s Creek’? ‘mdash; and on the Internet, well, that’s the kind of teen sex that sends you to jail. ‘ ‘ ‘ No, the good kind was the fantastic stuff that suggested morally unsound goals for a generation and made older viewers wonder why their teen years weren’t more exciting. But you can get that anywhere these days ‘mdash; why, teens are doing each other left and right on a weekly basis on shows like ‘Gossip Girl.’ It’s almost enough to make you forget what teenage sex is really like ‘mdash; begging your homecoming date for a quickie in a parked car behind the local Taco Bell. ‘ ‘ ‘ Filmmakers saw the signs. They knew that teen sex was permeating the very fabric of society, and if they wanted to keep kids watching their movies, they needed a way to stay relevant. Their brilliant solution? Boobies. ‘ ‘ ‘ Because hey, you still can’t see full frontal on ‘90210,’ right? So any serious attempt at story or character development disappeared as movies like the straight-to-DVD ‘American Pie’ sequels de-legitimized the genre into something between a CW sitcom and softcore porn. ‘ ‘ ‘ With the market so diluted by unrated DVDs and weekly TV shows, teen sex in the movies has little appeal anymore ‘mdash; just look at ‘Sex Drive.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ Naturally there are factors like ineffective advertising or lack of star power, but the humiliating defeat of ‘Sex Drive’ is indicative of a shift in what audiences want. Wish-fulfillment fantasies about underage boinking is so 20th century ‘mdash; the role of teen sex as a way of coming-of-age has dissipated, replaced quickly by Judd Apatow’s movies about adult sex. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘The 40 Year Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up’ and ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall,’ to name a few, have cemented the director/writer/producer’s place as the new master of combining pathos with sex comedy. The Apatow-produced ‘Superbad’ was a borderline teen-sex comedy, but also heralded the quick popularization of the bromance. ‘ ‘ ‘ So here we are, at the end of an era. If Hollywood still has the potential to create a meaningful teen-sex comedy, we haven’t seen it. The genre will continue to die a slow, painful death in DVD sequels and low box office returns. ‘Sex Drive’ won’t be the final nail in its coffin ‘mdash; just another lashing of a long-dead horse, ineffectual and unnoticed.