Hooking Up

Indie comedies more often than not take an outlandish idea, set it into motion, and see what happens. Nico Raineau and Lauren Schacher’s Hooking Up is one of those comedies. It combines sexual addiction, testicular cancer, and a road trip to produce hilarious results…hopefully.

Brittany Snow plays Darla, a columnist for a prominent magazine run by Tanya (Jordana Brewster), who is a sex addict. The film opens with Darla having a quickie with the leader of the sex addicts group she’s forced to attend by court order. There she runs into mild-mannered Bailey (Sam Richardson), who’s attending the cancer survivors group next door. He lost one t******e to cancer and may lose the other. He is still hung up on his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth (Anna Akana), who recently dumped him. Every advance he makes to mend their relationship is received with an icy cold reply. It’s over.

“Darla devises the idea to take Bailey to every spot she ever had sex and have sex with him…”

Darla is now in a desperate position as she was fired from her job for screwing an intern, not long after losing a sexual harassment lawsuit. Darla devises the idea to take Bailey to every spot she ever had sex and have sex with him there. We’re talking well over one hundred stops. Bailey agrees because of all the easy sex he’ll get, and Darla now has a column idea—and bonus, each one can call it therapy. The complication is Bailey doesn’t know Darla is using him for a column making their adventure public, and Darla agrees to take Bailey to Dallas, where he uses her to prove that he’s moved on with a new “girlfriend” to his parents and especially Liz.

So, therein lies the comedy proposition. A raging sex addict goes on a road trip to have sex with a serial monogamist as therapy. But my guess is they learn more about themselves and each other than they originally anticipated.