My Awkward Sexual Adventure (Sean Garrity, 2012): Canada

Reviewed by Grace Williamson at the Metro IV, Santa Barbara International Film Festival

“Feel Good,” is the first thing that came to mind after watching this magnificent film.  I know when I see a movie I know immediately if I liked it or did not, there is no middle ground for film in my head, in fact I think it is harder to analyze films that I enjoy.  With that in mind I find many films that deal with sexual topics to be made with more creativity and grace than many with more serious topics.

My Awkward Sexual Adventure is not to be hidden behind closed doors, it is a film that should be paraded down the streets of Vancouver.  The cinematography reminded me of a great party movie like The Hangover, or   Wedding Crashers,  we are seeing the male side of bad sex.  The opening scene has our main man Jordan (Jonas Chernick) who is having sex with his sleeping girlfriend, unable to keep her engaged.  A very unsatisfied Rachel (Sarah Manninen) breaks up with Jordan as he proposes to her.  Jordan, an accountant then goes to visit a friend and meets a stripper struggling with increasing debt.  With fate on his side Julia (Emily Hampshire) and Jordan decide to help each other become better people.

I think the way this film approached stripping as not necessarily taboo was refreshing  not everyone needs the money to get through school, but that doesn’t mean it is a job that our society should look down on the way we do. So often we only see the side of stripping through dirty rimmed glasses, it always feels biased.   My Awkward Sexual Adventure, shows that there is more than meets the eye and that is what is important.

Thus begins this grand tale of friendship and learning about ones self, and true value.  As a society we have traveled through a wave of awkward everything, but this is the first movie that has made awkward bearable and witty, instead of uncomfortable and too awkward.  The best way to explain that is a scene where Jordan is trying to talk to an attractive woman and she works as a real estate agent and his response was, “I’m a homo…homeowner.”  Various occurances such as this continue which make you become Jordan’s number one fan at wanting to see him succeed.

My one bone to pick with this film was the dreaded ultimatum; I loath films that have ultimatums in them.  I would never make someone choose between two people, and I feel it is incredibly unrealistic to not have the ability to talk about something like that.  These scenes are very cliche and over dramatized, which I think is very poor taste but there is reason for this in the film. Jordan needs to lose everything to find what he really values and needs in his life.

Overall I would recommend this to everyone, this is no American Pie, which many who hadn’t seen it tried to compare it to. I say give it a chance, and I’m sure you will be pleasantly surprised.