A sex addict re-enacts every one of her 169 conquests on a road trip across America with a man she’s only just met – he’s got testicular cancer – in this shallow, dismally unfunny comedy from Nico Raineau. Brittany Snow does her best to make the character convincing but not only is the movie (clearly inspired by Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck) a comedy dead zone, it is virtually devoid of recognisably real human beings.
In a nicely tuned performance, Snow plays Darla, a cynical sex columnist sacked from her job on a magazine after being caught shagging an intern in the editor’s office. (The firing is nicely spiky: “You’re not the only nympho who can form a sentence.”) An earlier sexual harassment complaint means that Darla is forced to attend a sex addicts’ group where she meets adorable Bailey (Sam Richardson), a sweet guy who’s walked into the wrong meeting: he’s meant to be next door with the cancer survivors. The script completely fudges Darla’s sex addiction – one minute she’s a liberated woman doing her thing, the next she’s facing up to her behaviours and recovery. She never has to deal with any kind of social shunning or slut shaming.
Inexplicably, five minutes after meeting, Darla and Bailey embark on their road trip; they’re not a couple, this is a kind of therapy for both of them. Actually, she’s secretly blogging about the experience to try to get her job back. You can guess what happens. There’s nothing in their chemistry to suggest the two should get together never mind stay together – but during one of their encounters, they kiss, and Darla’s face, hardened by years of empty anonymous hook ups, softens like a flower, just in time for a fantasy fairytale ending.
Weirdly prudish about the intimacy scenes, the sex addiction storyline is a cheap attempt to spice up the romcom formula, but this movie is as vanilla as they come.
• Hooking Up is on digital platforms from 8 June.
