She then gets to work on “Sex Appeal”: software meant to guide you through your first sexual experience. Luckily, a STEM contest challenges Avery to design an app to solve a personal problem in her life. It seems sex is the one thing she knows nothing about. But when her long-distance boyfriend Casper wants to have sex, she panics. The subject of Sex Appeal is Avery (Mika Abdalla), a high school student and future MIT admittee who is good at pretty much everything. However–in an obvious attempt to draw a complex picture of sex–the film drastically oversimplifies what sex means to each character, portraying the concept as less relatable to the common teen experience and more moralizing to viewers. But despite its somewhat fresh take on the teen film genre, Sex Appeal has a lot of kinks to work through.įresh on the heels of the popular Kissing Booth and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before franchises, Sex Appeal wrests attention from “getting the guy” and refocuses its story as one of self-discovery and sexual awakening.
Director Talia Osteen’s teen drama is all about the relationship between love and–you guessed it–sex. If you think you know what to expect from a high school rom-com, you might be surprised by watching Sex Appeal.
