Ed Cole (Haley Joel Osmont) is a former student teacher who falls on hard times and finds himself working at a bagel shop. He decides it's time to kick start his career and get back into teaching. However, Ed is unable to find a position teaching in his specialist subjects and reluctantly takes on the role of taking an after school class of detention kids. Ed quickly learns that the kids aren't currently learning Sex Ed and takes it upon himself to start teaching a course on Sex Ed much to the dismay of Reverend Marcus Hamilton (Chris Williams) who happens to be the strict father of one of the children in Ed's class.
My first thoughts when watching this film is that it kind of reminded me of Dangerous Minds (albeit a watered down and much less gritty version of the same film). I haven't seen Dangerous Minds for quite some time, but I don't recall feeling that it wasn't gearing itself to the wrong audience and ultimately that is what the biggest problem is with Sex Ed.
For a start it makes teaching kids lessons in Sex Ed the focus of most of its plot; explaining to kids what all the various body parts are, how to put condoms on, what all the 'scientific' words are called etc - this is all fine and I can see that to older children or young teenagers that this may be of interest and educational. The problem is that the filmmakers then slap a 15 certificate on it and with the exception of the classroom scenes the film is then filled with bawdy sexual scenes, violence, picking up prostitutes. Whilst I have nothing against these things in a mainstream film it did seem strange to give the majority of the film a sordid feel to it when it quite clearly has a rather wholesome message at heart. I'm really not sure why the filmmakers chose this approach when it probably would have been funnier if it would have been a clean comedy focusing on a sexually inexperienced teacher struggling to teach children about Sex Ed (at least that way it might have been a film that a family could perhaps sit down and watch together and would have at least appealed more to its intended target audience). The problem is that it doesn't play out like this and to be honest I thought that Ed got the kids onside a little too easily - I felt there were way more opportunities available to make the classrooms scenes funnier.
Another problem for me is that even when I looked beyond the fact that as a man in my 30's I clearly wasn't the target audience the film just isn't that funny and just seemed full of clichés. Haley Joel Osmont's character is a pathetic guy, but he's like this all the way through the film and to be honest it's mildly depressing.
In all honesty, Sex Ed's confusing tone is its biggest enemy; it's central story is about Sex Ed and the film does a reasonable job of raising awareness of the importance of using condoms and in highlighting the possible consequences of not taking precautions whilst having sex (which is great). It's too bad that this message seems to be overshadowed by clichéd sub plots, pointless violence, bawdiness, and a distinct lack of humour. I can see what was trying to be achieved here, but it's been handled really badly here.
