Doin’ It Review: A Sex-Positive Comedy

Doin’ It is a fun, expressive comedy that knows exactly how to make the audience laugh but struggles to bring the full potential out of its themes.

Doin’ It follows a 30-year-old software engineer named Maya (Lilly Singh), who returns to the United States after spending her childhood in India. Unable to find work in the tech industry, Maya takes on a job as a substitute teacher at a local high school. But when she’s assigned to teach sex education, things quickly turn awkward – as Maya has never even had sex herself.

As with any comedy, Doin’ It’s biggest strength is that it continually knows how to make the audience laugh without ever seeming like it’s trying too hard. None of the jokes feel forced, and even the lengthy sketches feel very organic and natural. Much of this comes down to Lilly Singh’s endearing lead performance, which immediately getting the audience to connect with her character through relatable one-liners and some unexpected fourth wall breaking. 

But the real power of Doin’ It isn’t solely its sense of humor: the film also delivers a very meaningful, astute dissection of sexuality and self-expression that runs much deeper than the surface-level jokes. It’s very reminiscent of Netflix’s Sex Education in the way it uses teenage humor to explore some very mature topics, including the value of consent, the spectrum of sexuality, and the importance of feeling comfortable in one’s own body.

To this end, Doin’ It is a very timely, necessary film that clearly has something to say and executes that message incredibly well. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about its one-dimensional characters and underwhelming final act. Despite the excellent performances and sharp sense of humor, many of Doin’ It’s main characters only exist for a single purpose. There’s the confident best friend, the conservative mother, the charming love interest – but none of the characters really develop beyond these superficial labels.

This leaves Doin’ It feeling quite hollow in its story, despite the screenplay’s best attempts to give depth to the ideas it explores. There’s a tendency to prioritize the overarching social commentary over the basic storytelling devices (the characters, relationships, etc) that feels very underwhelming at times. This culminates in quite a frustrating final act, where the film continues to dance around these conceptual ideas of sexuality and identity without linking them in any meaningful way to the characters themselves.

There’s something very admirable about the way Doin’ It uses such an accessible formula to explore more complex, mature themes, but the film doesn’t always feel like it’s being as ambitious as it could be. At least on the surface of the story, there’s nothing here that’s not been explored in teen comedies time and time again throughout the past couple of decades. The film is a showcase of fun performances, well-written jokes, and important ideas that feel much more powerful on their own than within this jumbled narrative.

Doin’ It will be released in select US theatres on September 19, 2025.