Sex Tape

It's never nice to laugh at people less fortunate than you, and that's probably the main reason I never laughed once while watching Sex Tape.  The people in this movie are dumber than dirt, and I guess we're supposed to be amused by that fact.  Now, obviously, people in the movies are never really as smart as they are in real life.  But nobody here seems to have a shred of intelligence, or acts like a person would in such a situation.

The movie stars Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz - two actors who can be very likable with the right material, but not so here.  You can't really blame them completely, as nobody would be able to survive the stuff they're forced to do.  Segel often looks bored, like he's aware he's stuck in a turkey.  I learned that both he and his writing partner, Nicholas Stoller, were hired to punch up the script and add more laughs.  If this is the case, I would hate to see what the script looked like before they were involved with it.  As for Diaz, this is her third major bomb in a row, after last fall's The Counselor, and The Other Woman from three months ago.  Unless she gets a little smarter about the scripts she signs on for, she's going to need a career intervention before too long.

The two play a married couple named Jay and Annie.  We see how they met back in college, and yes, it is awkward to see Segel (who is 34 in real life) and Diaz (close to hitting 42) trying to pass themselves off as college students.  Back when they were young and in love, they used to have sex all the time, and just about anywhere they wanted.  Now they are married with two kids, have careers, and hardly have time for sex at all.  Annie writes a successful mommy blog, which is on the verge of being bought by a major corporation.  Jay works in the music industry, though we're never really told exactly what he does.  To celebrate Annie's success with her blog, the two decide to send the kids off to grandma's for the night, and partake in the wild sex they used to enjoy.  This results in them making a three hour sex video on Jay's new iPad, where they perform every move in the Joy of Sex book.  When they're done, Annie tells Jay to delete the video, and naturally he forgets.

Not only has Jay forgotten to delete the video, but he has also unwittingly sent the video to all their friends, family members, neighbors, business clients and even the mailman.  Within a few days, he gets a mysterious text message from a phone number he doesn't recognize, saying that the mystery person behind the text has seen their sex tape.  Wanting to find out who sent the text, and also wanting to prevent anyone else from seeing it, Jay and Annie race mindlessly around town, trying to steal everyone's iPad.  It's at this point that the audience starts to wonder if the filmmakers even understand how technology works.  As the movie drags on, Jay and Annie come across as blithering morons as they race about and get into one contrived and unfunny situation after another, as they try to stop people from watching their video.

Consider one of the dumbest scenes in Sex Tape - Annie worries that the video has wound up on the iPad of her potential boss who might be hiring her soon.  So, they show up at the door of the boss (Rob Lowe), saying that they are collecting for a charity.  Jay wants to start searching the house for the iPad while Annie distracts and talks to the boss, so he says he needs to use the bathroom and leaves.  While investigating the different rooms, he comes across an attack dog, which chases him throughout the house, and leads to an overly long and desperately boring slapstick scene where Jay just can't shake this persistent dog.  While this is happening, Annie's future boss invites her to join him in snorting cocaine, which she does.  Not only is this scene incredibly stupid, but it makes no sense as to why Annie and the head of the company can't hear Jay and the dog tearing the house apart just the next room over.  How many ways can one single scene manage to go wrong?

The ultimate sin the movie commits is not just that it's unfunny, but it's also not very sexy or racy to begin with.  That's the one thing you think the filmmakers would get right, but nope.  We don't even really get to see the video to begin with, and what little we do get to see boils down to more lame slapstick.  And just like a lot of recent R-rated comedies, the last 15 minutes or so are devoted to a lot of moralizing, with a character spelling out the ultimate message of the movie to the audience.  This time, the character is the owner of a porn video website (played by an uncredited Jack Black), who sits Jay and Annie down, and gives them a very forced speech about love and relationships.  This is after Jay and Annie (and their kids, for some unfathomable reason) try to break into the porn video website's headquarters, so they can destroy the central computer before their sex tape is uploaded to the site.   Uh-huh.

Sex Tape is a bafflingly idiotic movie, with characters who are too stupid to live.  This is one of those films that gives you a bad feeling early on, but you do your best to stay positive, and not let early fears sway you.  Then it just gets progressively dumber and less funny, and your heart just kind of sinks.  When it's over, you wish you could turn back time to before you bought your ticket, put your wallet back in your pocket, and walk out of the building.

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