Purity culture and abstinence-only education get a gross comedy send-up in Sara Zandieh’s new film “Doin’ It.” It’s exactly as it’s advertised, a comedy about sex, only this time, its main character is far from a hedonist. Like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” what our hero lacks in experience, she makes up for in curiosity, stumbling into a belated journey of self-discovery that will challenge her family’s notions of what it means to behave “like a decent woman.”
After a particularly embarrassing high school incident, Maya (Lilly Singh) moved to India with her strict mother and grandmother. Now in her 30s and still never been kissed, Maya returns to the U.S. as a computer engineer, hoping to launch the next big app aimed at teens, but finds resistance as she hasn’t spent enough time with her target demographic. To rectify the oversight, she signs up to be a substitute teacher at a local high school, where she lands a spot as a substitute teacher talking about sex ed, a subject she knows next to nothing about. Saddled with a subpar abstinence-only curriculum, Maya decides to spice things up to engage her students, teaching them about anatomy, sexual orientation, and having frank conversations about sex. The unorthodox teaching lands her in hot water, and it’s a question of whether or not she can stay and continue to learn life lessons from her students or get kicked out by the pearl-clutching school board.
Written by Zandieh, Singh, and Neel Patel, “Doin’ It” mixes a few moments of fun, some heartwarming conversations, and, of course, some moments of low-brow jokes meant to make the audience reel in disgust, channeling the humor of horny comedies of the 1990s like “American Pie.” The jokes in the film run the gamut between meaningful and distracting. That wild card probability makes the film feel less sophisticated than it’s trying to be.
In addition to the film’s larger conversation of sexual education as a means to sexual empowerment, there’s also a cultural reckoning between Maya and her mom, Veena (Sonia Dhillon Tully), who holds outdated beliefs on how a woman is supposed to behave. Originally, Veena moved her daughter out of the country to an all-girls’ school when she was younger in an effort to restore her reputation, something Maya later learns did not happen to the boy who was also caught in the act during the school talent show. But in trying to address her mother’s outdated cultural expectations on women, Maya’s conversations eventually soften her mother’s stance on a new potential suitor, Farhad (Cas Anvar). The other meaningful relationship upon Maya’s return to the States is with her old friend Jess (Sabrina Jalees), a free-wheeling spirit whose running joke is to update Maya with a new stage of her new relationship, which is getting more serious with every meet-up. Their reconnection also allows Maya the chance to catch up on the high school hijinks she missed out in her strict schooling.
Singh, in her first leading role with “Doin’ It,” is no stranger to making audiences laugh. The YouTube comedian broke out with the late-night talk show “A Little Late with Lilly Singh” and is trying something different with her part as Maya. She’s at ease making dirty jokes and engaging in deep conversations with her students, and even her shared moments with resident scene stealer Stephanie Beatriz, as Barbara—a janitor with a secret—are enjoyable, even if narratively speaking, they make little sense. With a supporting cast that includes SNL legend Ana Gasteyer as a flustered principal and Utkarsh Ambudkar (“Ghosts”) as the high school crush who has, ahem, grown up, Singh has more than enough support around her in her maiden leading role.
Zandieh is also no stranger to making audiences laugh, as her previous film, “A Simple Wedding,” took on Iranian family tensions and marital expectations. With “Doin’It,” both she and Singh are in on the joke, even milking the disgusting moments for every laugh. Although the movie never quite graduates from its juvenile sense of humor, it’s not all that there is in “Doin’ It.” Zandieh and Singh attempt to have meaningful conversations about sex education that needs to be more than birthing videos and STD scare literature, and taking on double standards against women between scenes of using a dildo as a smoothie blender and comparing different faces made during orgasm. “Doin’ It” is more of a fling than one for the books, but it’s a fun one, nonetheless.
