Love and Air Sex

Doin’ It Well: Sarah Paxton in Love and Air Sex

Time Investment: 91 min.
Return on Investment: 80 min.

It seems that Aquamarine is all grown up. You’d barely recognize Sara Paxton, the former child actress who starred as the titular mermaid in the 2006 tween hit, as she mimes graphic sex during the climax of the new rom com Love and Air Sex (Tribeca Films). She’s foul-mouthed, tatted and—most importantly—hilarious as Kara, a recently single and volatile jewelry designer. In fact, the entire cast of Bryan Poyser’s raunchy sex comedy is refreshingly fun—a nice surprise from a film that, on paper, hardly stands out from a crowded field of mumbly, festival comedies about poor losers in love.

More surprising, it’s a rather touching break-up movie, albeit one buried under a few layers of gratuitous filth—the film opens with two orgasms. Cloverfield’s Michael Stahl-David stars as heartbroken Los Angeles screenwriter Stan who impulsively books a trip to Austin after Facebook alerts him that his ex-girlfriend Cathy (Ashley Bell) will be in town. Once in Texas he is reunited with his taco truck-owning best friend played by Zach Cregger (of The Whitest Kids U’ Know fame) who is also attempting to get over a breakup from his girlfriend, the aforementioned Kara. Stahl-David and Bell charm with their adorable awe-shucks cluelessness, the perfect balance to Paxton and Creggers’ volcanic chemistry. It works so well, Love and Air Sex hardly needs the gimicky (and very real) coitus competition plot line, which reads like a bad piece of product placement rather than a Napoleon Dynamite-style WTF moment.