In the sex-comedy genre, there is a tendency for female-fronted and -created sex comedies to be markedly more perceptive, fresh, intelligent, and, yes, sometimes even funnier, than the tomcatting male counterparts determined to follow the Porky's role model. CRSHD, the feature debut of writer-director Emily Cohn, is no exception - though it must be mentioned somewhere that the filmmaker does crib a dirty joke from Joe Eszterhas' Showgirls script. But the rest is largely good news.
The setting is an American university campus (filmed on location at Oberlin College in Ohio) at the end of the school year, the plot centers on a trio of idiosyncratic alterna-chicks who reside in the same freshman dorm, astronomy scholarship-recipient Izzy (Isabelle Barbier), Indian (as in India) "princess" Anuka (Deeksha Ketkar), and lesbian Fiona (Sadie Scott). Izzy remains the only virgin of the trio and wants to remedy that in a day or so before the end of the semester. A solution arises when the campus Instagram hottie combines her impromptu art-exhibit with a "crush party," in which secretly smitten students can hook up at last with objects of their affections.
While all three of these heroines are interested, it's Izzy—torn between passion and the need to prepare for tomorrow's crucial final exam—who receives the precious invite (seemingly) from an anonymous admirer. Of course, the perfect guy for her has been waiting on the sidelines all along, a cliche so obvious it could work as irony. Cohn freshens the premise with clever low-tech visualizations of social-media interaction, plus some Diablo Cody-style youth speak comedy that about stuff that, if it isn't a thing in real life, really should be ("eye sex" especially).
The hothouse environment of American student micro-society is portrayed amusingly with a minimum of caricature, and when was the last time you saw a college-based romp in which someone actually does study? The soundtrack is pretty hip as well, cueing the liner note that filmmaker Cohn is the daughter of musician Marc Cohn and newscaster Elizabeth Vargas (listen for Marc Cohn's voiceover cameo talking astronomy).
Disc extras include a Zoom meeting, in which Cleveland indie-film exhibitor Dave Huffman leads a Q&A between Cohn and principal actors, plus a feature commentary track by Cohn. Recommended.