Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe
Distributor: Columbia
Runtime: 94 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2014
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Sex Tape, much like the central relationship at the beginning of the story, is disappointingly uninspired.
A couple, Annie and Jay (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel), who are struggling with their marriage, decide to make a pornographic film of themselves to spice things up a little. A short warning – it is predictably unsuitable for youngsters or the faint of heart. When their private film is mistakenly uploaded to the ‘cloud’, and to all the iPads that they have distributed as gifts to friends and family, they have to set out to find and destroy all the copies of their video. The opening act up to this point is devoid of suspense or surprise for anyone who has seen the trailers for the film, and it simply takes too much time setting up what is a basic story. Diaz and Segel have a workable repartee, but the chemistry which would have elevated this standard rom-com is lacking. Individually, Segel is stronger than his partner, as Diaz struggles with genuine emotional lifting. That said, these shortcomings cannot be blamed on the pair alone, as the screenplay doesn’t give them much opportunity to stretch themselves, and often takes the easy way out with a quick throwaway line rather than any meaningful themes. I am by no means being prudish on this point, it is just that several crude comedies of late have managed to have this cake and eat it too, such as the excellent ‘Bad Neighbours’. One is also forced to wonder if techno-illiteracy jokes have overstayed their welcome after this and last year’s average comedy ‘The Internship’.
The iPads with their children and Annie’s mother are easy enough to regather, however those with their married best friends Robbie and Tess (Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper) and Annie’s boss Hank (Rob Lowe) prove a little harder. Corddry, Kemper and Lowe walk away with the show from the leading duo. Corddry plays Robbie as incredulous and dry in alternating scenes, and Kemper’s faux innocent delivery complements it nicely, making their shared jokes hit and stick with the greatest success. Lowe’s onscreen persona pokes fun (hopefully intentionally) of his infamous history of addiction, and the sincerity of Hank’s manner juxtaposed against his ‘letting his hair down’ while his family is away is admittedly amusing.
As the couple (spoiler alert!) deal with sadistic children and kind-hearted porn barons, the night gets weirder and weirder up to its inevitable conclusion. Their romance healed and whole once more, every loose end is nicely tied up. As a whole, it feels inconsequential. It wants to explore that supposedly inevitable lull in marriages and the notion of love, but it ultimately manages to cheapen relationships by bogging them down in this whole affair and corrupting what they represent.
Pinning a barrage of overtly vulgar and sexual humour to a high concept story appears to be the modus operandi for many of Hollywood’s comedies in recent memory. In the case of ‘Sex Tape’, the top billed duo are reasonable in their own right but fail to get the most out of this potentially interesting plot. Similarly the jokes are occasionally guffaw-inducing, but the movies lacks any real heart to pin them to. Let’s hope that the filmmakers realise what a mistake they’ve made and set out soon to delete all available copies. That’s probably an overly harsh assessment, but the bitter taste of the disappointing result from the talent involved that is ‘Sex Tape’ is still palpable in my mouth.
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