Sex Appeal is a Hulu original film about an overachieving high school girl who is a master at STEM, but a novice at love and sex. Her long-distance boyfriend says he’s DTF (literally) when they meet at the next STEM contest. This freaks her out and no amount of advice from her three moms helps. So she decides she needs to experiment to gain a better, more logical understanding of this sex thing. And what better lab partner than her only guy friend who she punched in the nuts in jr. high for trying to kiss her. Surely he’s down for the scientific method.

This is not the first raunchy teen sex comedy told from a female perspective, but it just might be the raunchiest (or the most frank). And, honestly, for the first half, I laughed a lot at all the crude, rude, and open comedy… and then paused and wondered if I was immediately added to a sex pervert watch list since I’m just a few years past the target audience. Ahem.

The film’s basic thesis is that most teen sex comedies are for horny guys while girls get movies that tell them it’s ok to kiss a guy. Where is the raunchy teen sex comedy for the girls that suggests sex positivity? And that’s a fine thesis… but also it has something – eventually – to say about love and then dares to end with an emotionally honest, non-traditional ending. I liked that.

What I didn’t like though were the characters on any kind of emotional level. I liked the logical, STEM-obsessed main character – a smart girl who’s very cute but isn’t boy crazy. But the film eventually grows a romantic side and asks us to care about her on an emotional level. And it was too late by then and they couldn’t make the adjustment. There was a huge emotional hole in the film that no amount of sad songs could fill.

So my score quickly shrank down to three stars. I still like the movie and I appreciate its emotional honesty at various points (and I did laugh quite a bit in the first half). And for taking roads less traveled by the end. I just wish it had managed to create characters I found emotionally believable, not just logical and conceptually interesting.

Score: 78