“I Want Your Sex” (2026) revolves around Elliot (Cooper Hoffman), assistant to Erika Tracey, (Olivia Wilde), a contemporary artist, as two detectives, Detective Zola (Margaret Cho) and Detective Zem (Johnny Knoxville), question him about his relationship with Erika. Elliot weaves a tale about how Erika ushered in his sexual awakening as key to his coming-of-age story. Though it is sporting a committed cast, is visually arresting and sports many of the elements that made Nineties independent films great, it is a bit one note unless ribald situations are enough to satisfy you.
Continuing to make his daddy proud, Hoffman, a solid actor in “Saturday Night” (2024) and “The Long Walk” (2025), is just as good as the affable, awkward and relatively innocent Elliot, an unlikely member of the art world. Though he does not possess the demeanor of his contemporaries at his job, his eagerness and openness are sufficient to make him standout in a crowd. Dressed like a hipster without the insufferable attitude, he is supposed to be an everyman of his generation and not too interesting to follow. Despite having a girlfriend, Minerva (Charli XCX), who is just going through the motions, he is instantly captivated when he meets Erika because she is the only interesting character.
If you are no longer into blank slate male protagonists, “I Want Your Sex” may not be for you. His journey largely consists of being a sub and enjoying it, so if you innately find that hilarious, then you found the perfect movie for you, but if you see a man in lacey frilly underwear and just think, “Yes, so what? And?” then you should probably skip this one. By the way, he looks terrific in the role. Can he sing? Maybe he can do a theatrical performance of “The Rocky Horror Show?” And pervs, no male full-frontal nudity except one scene from a minor character. Everyone is radical about sex while simultaneously conforming to society’s rules. Cue scoffing sound. No one is asking for nudity or sex, but with a provocative title derived from an Eighties song from George Michael, lots of bare breasts and butts are not exactly radical, but fairly conventional.
“I Want Your Sex” often alternates between Elliot’s fantasy versus the reality of Erika, and the only difference lies in her attitude. Wilde is game and so much fun to watch with some great and often profound dialogue to play with. It is instantly obvious which Erika is onscreen. She also looks terrific. If this movie revolved around the real Erika, that would be a fun watch. She never gets her true Miranda Priestley moment on the inner workings of her business though she does get a lot of flippant monologues. There is a desperation, reckless, adrenalin junkie nature to her character that would have been more interesting to explore. The satire of the art world was great, but because Elliot is kind of ignorant and movie goers are stuck following him, it means being kept at arm’s length with the art world’s heavy hitters.
Wilde steals every scene, but in her heyday, Parker Posey would have dragged this movie kicking and screaming into outer space. Erika’s mind games are obvious as every encounter embeds a silent test to gauge how far she can go with Elliot. She is a bit addicted to him too, but the film does not get shot from her perspective until the denouement, which has more endings than “Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Kings” (2003). If so, then it is a truly depressing development that is so radical it becomes downright, depressingly romcomy. Ew. It is like “Kissing Jessica Stein” all over again. Akari’s film is cloaked in an outlandish veneer but leans towards heteronormative sexual norms as if it was the law of gravity.
There is an underexplored theme that held promise to making “I Want Your Sex” more than a collection of saucy skits. Elliot recruits his roommate and best friend, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), into a threesome with Erika. Adding sex to their friendship almost makes Apple come to an epiphany about herself and also awakens an unfamiliar response in Elliot, a willingness to finally assert a boundary. As depicted, it leaves the impression of a man annoyed that he is no longer getting sexual gratification, so he does not want to play, but emotionally, it feels as if it is because he is protective of Apple and recognizing some authentic emotions that he has for her. That storyline never goes further than that moment and Apple never appears again even as she was on the verge of becoming a three-dimensional person.
If “I Want Your Sex” has a problem, it is the same one that Steven Spielberg has in “Disclosure Day” (2026) with aliens. Araki and cowriter Karley Sciortino, Vogue’s former sex and relationship columnist, have not shown all the math of how sex helps Elliot achieve the next level of maturation in his life except through dialogue or external markers of success, but the internal journey is lacking. It is not on the page. Though abruptly curtailed, the gratification of sex’s effect on Apple is obvious. She was about to learn something about herself that she could not learn otherwise. Elliot is barely a real three-dimensional character, but just a Dickensian character letting things happen to him. Apple has an interior life that the trio of actors brought to life, but the cowriters ran from it. Why create this moment just to flee from it? It feels as if the movie betrayed its thesis. They are so committed to the bland and talk more than they show.
Daveed Diggs strikes an impressive pose as Vikktor (Daveed Diggs), the one who makes sure that Erika is a financial success, but again, he is an underutilized character. Mason Gooding looks fabulous as Zap, a gay assistant who befriends Elliot and inexplicably becomes his new best friend. Though queer, Gooding’s performance felt like a straight man playing a gay guy, and once again, for a movie committed to sex, “I Want Your Sex” is purely hetero hetero hetero. All talk. “Philadelphia” (1993) had more action.
Visually it pops. There is colorful screen casting of texts, and animation when least expected. Araki coedits with Victor de la Parra and keeps the momentum going though not enough to offset a story stuck in one gear. The narration is more unconventional as it jumps around the timeline without becoming confusing or too repetitive. Araki fast-forwards when it begins to repeat instead of cutting away, but it is like rearranging two chairs, one a dud that you will not want to sit on it for the entire run time and the other with a distinct edge, but you are not allowed to get to near it because then the other chair would be forgettable and unused. If you are a fan of the cast, then see it, but lower your expectations because the time does not fly by. A boring sex romp.
