sean anders Tagged Articles at Cinematical

You have probably already forgotten about the R-rated comedy Sex Drive that opened in 9th place the weekend of Oct. 17 and quickly disappeared altogether. With no big stars, a generic concept, and an uninteresting title, even the smattering of good reviews it got -- and it actually was pretty funny -- couldn't help it.

But you tend to fail upward in Hollywood, and the two guys behind the film -- writer/director Sean Anders and co-writer John Morris -- are still in demand. Not only are they writing a Meatballs remake for Lionsgate, but now they're set to co-direct a comedy called Hot Tub Time Machine. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it's about a group of grown-up friends who visit a hot tub where they once partied, discover it's now a time machine, and travel back to when they were young, raunchy fellows. Hilarity ensues.

You might say, "Why make a movie about a time-traveling hot tub?" Well, I say, "Why not make a movie about a time-traveling hot tub?" Anders and Morris' first film, the indie comedy Never Been Thawed, was about a group of frozen-food collectors and a Christian rock band. It sounds like Sex Drive, about a teenager driving cross-country for a booty call, was probably the least bizarre of their projects.

Hot Tub Time Machine is being written by someone named Jason Heald, by the way, who doesn't appear on IMDB. First-timer? Pseudonym? Typo? If Mr. Heald is reading this, please contact us and tell us whether your screenplay is funny and why we should trust you. Thanks.

One normally tries not to bring the marketing of a film up in its review. Maybe one can toss in a mention here of a misleading trailer or of a really clever teaser poster, but that only serves and represents a film up to a point, after which the final product should serve and represent, well, itself.

However, the poster for Sex Drive so clearly represents what I cared for least in this film that we're just going to start there ... specifically not with the relatively apt one in which our protagonist (Josh Zuckerman) has an erect speedometer, but the most recent one, the one that just has a donut on it.

It's funny, I was just thinking about Seth Green the other day -- not the usual run of things I can assure you, but as I was watching Radio Days, I couldn't help but be impressed by Green's career over the years. But as funny and talented as I think he is, I've got a bad feeling about anything that even remotely involves Fall Out Boy and the somewhat tired premise of a teen sex romp. MTV movie blog recently got the chance to visit the set of the teen/road flick Sex Drive, and scored a closer look at Green and members of the pop-rock band hard at work.

The film centers on a horny teen who takes a road trip with some friends so he can lose his virginity to a girl he knows online -- you know, that old chestnut. The flick was written and directed by Sean Anders, who only has a few credits to his name, but when one of them is a cult comedy about Christian Rock and frozen foods, it tends to stick in your memory. Drive also stars Josh Zuckerman as the aforementioned horny teenager, James Marsden, and Amanda Crew (John Tucker Must Die).

So, you might be wondering what Fall Out Boy has to do with all of this? (Well, other than an appearance on the Sex Drive soundtrack.) Turns out that FOB makes an appearance in the film as themselves, and Green will play an Amish "eccentric" who helps them out when their tour bus breaks down. Wow, this really isn't getting any better is it? But what should I expect from a teen sex comedy with the uninspiring title of Sex Drive? The only bright spot by the looks of things is going to be Green's performance as a whacked out Amish kid who has no intention of ever ending his Rumspringa. Sex Drive is scheduled to arrive in theaters this October.

How far would you go to shack up with someone you met on the internet? Though it's kind of embarrassing to admit (and my fellow Cinematical writers will torture me for this), back in college during my sophomore year I flew all the way to Utah to meet up with a girl I met online. Three months of chatting through a computer screen? Check. Three months of talking on the phone? Check. Pictures? Check. But when I finally went all the way out there, I learned that she and Utah were very different from anything I'd ever experienced in New York. Suffice it to say, after six days of shooting guns, visiting square-dancing clubs, feeding rats to snakes and witnessing more than one fight in a Denny's parking lot, I left Utah and never spoke to her again. But anyway ....

... The Hollywood Reporter tells us Josh Zuckerman (Feast), Amanda Crew and James Marsden will star in Sean Anders' teen sex comedy Sex Drive. The concept? "... an unlucky in love teen meets a girl on the internet who sends him the message "U Drive All the Way Here 4 Me ... I'll Go All the Way with U." Guess what happens next? Yup, our teen, named Ian (Zuckerman), convinces his friends to drive from Chicago to Knoxville so that he can lose his virginity to this girl with a dazzling vocabulary. If Marsden signs on (he's still in talks), he'd be playing Ian's brother. Yeah, so it's like Road Trip meets ... Dateline's To Catch a Predator series? Sweet! Right now it looks like filming will begin by the end of the year off a screenplay written by Anders and John Morris (who's also producing). So, would you drive half-way across the country for that?

It isn't uncommon for a guy to get a girl who's out of his league. It certainly happens in the movies and on television all the time. But it does happen sometimes in real life, and often the guy ends up feeling like he's never good enough. And then he sabotages the relationship somehow because of his insecurity. And then the idiot is back to dating women who aren't the woman of his dreams, always regretting screwing up that perfect thing he could have had. We've all seen it happen, right? Well, if you haven't, you can also see the scenario happen in the movies. Just recently I saw Run Fatboy Run, in which Simon Pegg plays a guy who leaves Thandie Newton (totally out of his league, right?) at the altar -- pregnant. And certainly this year's hit comedy Knocked Up was about a situation of a mis-matched couple. Oh, and the upcoming Margot at the Wedding has the same thing going on between Jack Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh. See, it happens all the time.

Now, according to Variety, there's another such movie coming (which we previously heard about and then saw on the pre-strike priority list). Titled literally She's Out of My League, this one is about a guy who finds himself dating an "extraordinarily beautiful woman" (why does it have to be about looks? certainly she could be out of his league in terms of brains or humor or other personality traits -- in Margot, Leigh is out of Black's league in multiple ways). Because he is insecure about her attraction to him, and because his friends and family are suspicious of beauty's motives, he comes close to sabotaging the relationship (unless he's about to leave her at the alter, with child, then this movie's got nothing on Fatboy). The movie will be directed by British sketch comedian Jim Field Smith and will star Jay Baruchel, best known from TV's Undeclared and, interestingly enough, Knocked Up. Originally scripted as a spec by Sean Anders and John Morris, the movie is currently in re-writes care of Tim Dowling (George Lucas in Love). It goes into production early next year, but if you can't wait to learn the secrets about how to score and keep a girl out of your league, I've got some tips: if it's good enough for Ric Ocasek, Rod Stewart and Billy Joel, it's good enough for you. And: girls love a funny guy, so if she's laughing, she probably doesn't care that you're not a hottie.

Odds and ends from Wednesday:

• Okay, so you're probably pretty sick of all the mutant talk by now, what with the tremendous amount of fuss surrounding X-Men: The Last Stand. Well, snap the hell out of it because The Mutant Chronicles is gearing up for production and just added Devon Aoki to a cast that already consists of John Malkovich, Thomas Jane, Stephen Rea and Ron Perlman. Aoki, who you may remember playing the devilish Miho in Sin City, will take on a similar role as a sexy, fearless fighter who puts kicking ass before her two small children. Look for the group MAM (Moms Against Miho) to have a problem with this whole thing.
• In an effort to to tap into the insecure, sexually inexperienced male inside all of us, Dreamworks wasted no time in snatching up the spec script, She's Out of My League, from the writing-directing team of Sean Anders and John Morris. Described as The 40-Year-Old Virgin meets There's Something About Mary, story will surround some ordinary dude who is attracted to, what he believes, is the perfect woman. That is, until his friends and family grow suspicious and attempt to sabotage any chance he has with the girl.
• Director M. Night Shyamalan recently spoke with Harry over on AICN and had some pretty interesting things to say about his upcoming film, Lady in the Water. While he didn't spoil the plot or give away the twist ending (Oh, c'mon -- you know there's going to be a twist ending), he did admit to feeling as if the film had a sort of Coen Brothers feel to it, in that it's very independent. That's also one of the main reasons why Lady went through Warners instead of Disney, so that Shyamalan could be, in his words, "off the map a little bit." Hey, I dig -- so long as that map doesn't lead to the bottom of a toilet.