Sex Appeal Review: Hulu's New Teen Comedy Can't Compare To Sex Education
Sex Appealis a teen comedy that feels too much like an imitation of the hit television show Sex Educationand the critically-acclaimed Booksmart. If it were not following on the heels of several exceptional stories about complicated young women discovering their sexuality, then Sex Appeal could have been worth a watch.
Avery Hansen-White (Mika Abdalla) is an overachieving high school teen who excels at things she is good at. This means she avoids things she knows she won’t be excellent in, such as normal teen stuff. Her goal in life is to be successful, so when her long-distance boyfriend suggests they have sex, Avery unexpectedly has a new goal. Luckily for her, a new STEM competition prompt becomes an avenue in which Avery can discover how to be good at sex. She decides to develop an app to help her become a master at it and to do so enlists the help of her oldest friend Larson (Jake Short) to be her test subject. Hilarity and awkwardness ensue.
Related: Why Sex Education Season 4 Should Be Its Last (Even Though It's Great)
Sex Appeal is a film that struggles on two fronts: It plays with a new set of archetypes and conventions that have been better articulated in other projects and there is too much of an emphasis on making a quirky and stylized teen sex comedy that character development for its lead gets left behind. The closest approximation to Sex Appealwould be the two projects previously mentioned. One can envision the pitch meeting for Sex Appeal that highlighted the connection to Booksmart and Sex Education because it is so glaringly obvious in the final product — from the enthusiastic «let's talk about sex» mother(s) to the quirky set of high school students who defy conventions. Whether it is intentional or
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