Author: Eric Jensen, Managing Editor
Remember that kid in middle school who would make a lame joke and misconstrue the scornful laughter of his classmates as appreciation? Sex and Death 101 is a sexier celluloid manifestation of that twerp. An obscenely vapid plot trembles atop the misguided assumption that even the worst of dialogue and acting can be rectified through explicit content and plentiful cleavage. In case there was any shadow of a doubt, there are some things that even cleavage can’t fix.
The premise is a futile blend of Wedding Crashers-like sexual bravado and The Matrix-type aesthetic phenomenon. Sharp-dressing Roderick Blank (Simon Baker)-a tan, sandy-haired stereotype of white male success-abandons his plans for marriage after receiving an anonymous email listing the names of all the women he’s ever slept with and, more importantly, all the women he will sleep with before he dies. The list ultimately adds up to 101 women and, lending meaning to the title’s flimsy wordplay, it turns out that Roderick learns all kinds of obvious and boring life lessons from his quest to bed every gal on the list. The ensuing shenanigans, much like a 100-level college class, are monotonous, simplistic and-mostly-a waste of time.
While screenwriter Daniel Waters’s Heathers was well-received upon its 1989 release, his sense of humor has decayed noticeably since then. From his tasteless inclusion of a scene in which a group of Catholic 18-year-old schoolgirls lose their virginity to an unconscious Roderick, to his inexplicable fascination with killing off characters by having them trip and break their necks, Waters’ jokes wash clumsily over a quiet, unsmiling audience.
The dynamic between Roderick and his friends provides fleeting comic relief, while viewers eventually begin to laugh at unreasonable scenarios like Roderick’s threesome with a famous lesbian power couple and his close encounter with necrophilia. Unfortunately, the laughter sounds more like ridicule than approval.
Waters also makes the odd choice of featuring a seemingly feminist subplot that follows Gillian (played by Winona Ryder), a disgruntled ex-wife who sleeps with sex offenders and misogynists only to poison them into a coma. The two plots lean awkwardly against one another, exploiting negative stereotypes of men and women alike and never really agreeing on a common theme. In the end, Sex and Death 101 is not much more than a sloppy montage of high-resolution porn and weak, unnecessary wisdom.
However, just as that annoying kid in middle school was always good for a cheap laugh at his expense, this movie is idiotic enough to provide unintended entertainment through its own illegitimacy. Whether or not such ironic amusement is worth $8.50 is really up to you.
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