DOIN' IT - Mark Reviews Movies

Doin' It, Aura Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 18, 2025

Comedy can be a great vehicle for communicating flaws within people and society, and at its most effective, Doin' It makes a good case that something is wrong with many people's attitude about sex. Even better, the movie, written by director Sara Zandieh and star Lilly Singh with Neel Patel, points out the core of the problem is a lack of education on the subject, while the solution rests in fixing that shortcoming.

As for the movie's success as a comedy, that's a different story. It has some funny moments, to be sure, although its two-tiered premise doesn't really add up and one can sense the filmmakers trying too hard for laughs, instead of simply finding them within the material.

For her part, Singh has been an online personality for more than a decade now, so moving into acting seems like an inevitable career progression in some way. She can be charming and funny here, playing a woman whose life has been, in a strange and embarrassing way, defined by sex.

See, as a young teen, her Maya was left traumatized at a school talent show, when she and her boyfriend showed each other certain parts of their body backstage. We'll just say that the boy's display involved him pulling down his pants and that he became quite excited by what his girlfriend showed him. Young Maya got an eyeful both figuratively and literally as a result, and when the curtain accidentally dropped, the rest of the audience witnessed the messy, gooey result, too.

That included May's mother Veena (Sonia Dhillon-Tully) and grandmother (played by Usha Uppal), who decided to return to India so that the girl could have a "proper" education and upbringing, away from such permissive opinions and openness about sex. Basically, the adult Maya ended up with a psychological complex that has made the very thought of sex to fill her with shame. After returning to the States, her best friend from the old days Jess (Sabrina Jalees) buys Maya a vibrator, and every time she tries using it, the thought of her grandmother's assorted warnings about sex make any kind of enjoyment impossible.

The shorter version of this is that, in her early 30s, Maya is still a virgin. Part of the story, then, becomes about her starting to date in some real capacity or, at least, looking for a guy with whom she can have sex. This is kind of amusing on its own, mainly because her luck at picking candidates is bad (One guy wants to pretend she's his mother) and even spending time with fellow teacher Alex (Trevor Salter), a handsome and nice guy, is haunted by visions of Maya's judgmental grandmother.

Ultimately, though, Maya's repeatedly failing romantic and/or sexual escapades feel like a distraction from the smarter, more pointed setup and humor. That has her becoming a substitute teacher at a local high school in the first place, because she needs some cash to develop a phone application. She winds up teaching sex education, which is supposed to be ironic, since Maya has never had sex, but turns into something a bit wiser about how the imposition of shame on Maya toward the subject of sex isn't unique to her.

It's in the school, which has an abstinence-only policy when it comes to teaching about sex, and in what the students have been told, whether that be from religion to abstain completely or the pressure from classmates that not having sex is also a stigma. The screenplay is smart to take this side of the material seriously, because this is a serious matter for young people who already have to deal with the physiological confusion of adolescence and so many different, competing social pressures. Maya understands that from personal experience and decides to become an expert on sex, even as she continues to have a difficult time trying to have sex for the first time.

The people who should see this movie probably won't, on account of the same viewpoints its satirizing, and it's too bad the movie doesn't quite succeed at really selling its message, because the filmmakers are also trying to cram that other plot about Maya's love life into the narrative. There's an argument to be made, perhaps, that the humor doesn't line up with those intentions, either.

Being honest can and often is quite distinct from being crudely frank, and that opening scene sets a tone of the latter that, while genuinely funny at times, forces us to wonder if the movie's purpose is sincere or simply a justification to make some jokes. What's revealed about an antagonistic teacher (played by Mary Holland) in the third act, for example, is a subject about which a story that's genuine about this material wouldn't joke. It's played for laughs here, though—and not well, even without the additional baggage.

Regardless, Doin' It does seem to mean well. The actual result, though, feels conflicted in both the story it wants to tell and its tone.

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