It came as a great shock when I heard Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense, Secondhand Lions) has been cast in a new coming-of-age tale entitled Sex Ed.

It was surprising not because it sounds like a bad film, but because Haley Joel Osment, despite playing a major role in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, has been reduced to voice acting for straight-to-DVD animation films and video games. Could this mark the rebirth of a talented, and often overlooked, child actor?

Sex Ed will be directed by Isaac Feder, and according to THR Osment will play

a college graduate who dreams of teaching high school Algebra but due to budget restraints, end up teaching sexual education, despite being a virgin. He discovers an unlikely mentor in a blues bar, a ruthless enemy in the local PTA, and a gorgeous Polish girl for whom English is a distant second language.

While it doesn’t sound like the most original plot, and will probably end up bypassing cinemas in favour of a DVD release, Sex Ed has the potential to be a subtle, emotionally-engaging indie-drama, as long as Feder avoids slipping into teen comedy territory in vein of Not Another Teen Movie, Mean Girls and Role Models.

Reported by Jamie Neish