Doin' It
Directed by: Sara Zandleh
Written by: Sara Zandleh, Lily Singh, Neel Patel
Starring: Lily Singh, Ana Gasteyer, Stephanie Beatriz, Sabrina Jalees, Mary Holland
Release Date: September 19, 2025
Doin’ It (2025), starring Lily Singh, is a raunchy comedy with heart and a surprising sex-positive message. Read our full review of Sara Zandleh’s film here.
Low Expectations, Big Laughs
I’ll be honest: I went into Doin’ It with incredibly low expectations. I’ve never been a big fan of Lily Singh’s brand of humor. Her YouTube sketches and short-lived late-night show didn’t appeal to me, and I cringed at her awkward attempts to highlight her status as the only woman in late night.
So when I saw she was headlining a new comedy, I braced myself. But here’s the surprise: Doin’ It actually works. It’s not great filmmaking, but it’s consistently funny, surprisingly sex-positive, and buoyed by strong supporting performances. Against the odds, Singh delivers her best screen work yet.
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The Premise: A Virgin Teaching Sex Ed
Singh plays Maya, a recent college graduate still living with her mom—and still a virgin. When she lands a job teaching high school, the irony is that she’s hired to teach sex education. At first, Maya wants to quit, but her best friend Jess (Sabrina Jalees) pushes her to stick with it.
Things get even messier when Maya sparks a flirtation with fellow teacher Trevor Salter while simultaneously navigating awkward encounters with her students, who ask blunt and challenging questions. Her candid, no-nonsense teaching style earns the students’ respect, but uptight administrators, led by principal Ana Gasteyer and rival teacher Mary Holland, aren’t impressed.
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Family Complications and Cultural Clashes
As if school wasn’t complicated enough, Maya is also living with her mother (Sonia Dhillon Tunny), a traditional woman who previously moved Maya back to India after an embarrassing childhood incident. This backstory pays off in a mix of cringe comedy and heart, as Maya struggles to balance her mother’s expectations with her new life as a sex ed teacher.
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Why Doin’ It Works
The movie’s raunchy humor is balanced by refreshing honesty. Singh and her collaborators lean into sex-positive messaging, showing how candid conversations about sex can actually empower students. The comedy may be over the top, but the underlying approach feels surprisingly smart.
Singh brings an awkward authenticity to Maya that makes her more relatable than I expected. In interviews, she’s admitted she used to whisper the word “sex” out of embarrassment—an honesty that shines through in the film.
But the real MVP here is Sabrina Jalees as Jess. Her sharp, off-color observations and openness about her own relationship steal scene after scene. Every great comedy needs a supporting player who elevates the material, and Jalees fills that role perfectly. Also keep an eye on former Brooklyn 99 star, Stephanie Beatriz who steals a few scenes of her own as a lunch lady with a quirky secret life that will be important late in the film. Beatriz is effortlessly funny and wonderfully weird.
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Final Thoughts
Doin’ It is far from a perfect movie—it’s raunchy, messy, and uneven in places—but it’s also funnier, bolder, and more thoughtful than its premise suggests. Lily Singh may not convert all of her skeptics, but this sex-positive comedy proves she has more range than many gave her credit for.
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Star Rating
3.5 out of 5 stars
Raunchy, sex-positive, and surprisingly heartfelt, Doin’ It is a comedy that works better than you’d expect.
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