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I liked this movie better the first time, when it was known as Rob Reiner’s “The Sure Thing,” a 1985 comedy starring John Cusack as a desperately virginal boy-man who goes on a cross-country drive to hook up with a girl he’s never met.

“Sex Drive” offers its equivalent in Ian (Josh Zuckerman), who risks certain death by stealing a car belonging to his bully of an older brother (James Marsden) in order to score, several state lines away from home, with a honey he’s met online. As in “The Sure Thing,” Ian isn’t traveling alone: He’s got his best male friend, Lance (Clark Duke), a nebbish in “Superbad’s” McLovin’ mold, along for the ride, as well as longtime pal Felicia (Amanda Crew), Ian’s obvious romantic destiny.

The three of them get into various grotesque scrapes during their adventure, including an encounter with a weird hitchhiker (David Koechner) and a sexual misadventure between Lance and the bathroom-fixated wife of a dangerous redneck.

This would all just be a chore to sit through except for a slightly more wicked, even intelligent, strain of comedy coursing through “Sex Drive,” visible in Marsden’s winking, over-the-top performance as an ultra-homophobic savage. Even better is the film’s middle section spent in an unorthodox Amish community, with Seth Green as a mechanic so artfully sarcastic he can bring the unsuspecting to their knees.

It’s hard to know quite what to make of “Sex Drive.” It easily fits into the recent wave of gross-out comedies (”College,” “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”), but in some ways it looks like a knowing parody of a middling Judd Apatow (”Superbad”) movie. “Sex Drive’s” delirious climax, with most of the film’s characters caught in a chaotic mix-up, feels pretty fresh, however. Above all, Marsden and Green are a genuine delight.

We’ll have to see what “Sex Drive’s” creative team — writers Sean Anders (who also directed) and John Morris, who together made something called “Never Been Thawed” in 2005 — come up with next to see where their comedy is going.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com