July 23rd, 2014 
James Shotwell 
Film: Sex Tape
Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
From beginning to end, Sex Tape feels like a film that arrived in theaters a decade too late. There is not a single frame that is in any way sexy or sensual, and very few offer any substantial laughs. There is a sex scene or two, sure, but they’re handled so poorly (like much of the film) that all humor and romance is completely sucked out of the scene, leaving a slew of well known Hollywood talent looking like people who foolishly signed on to create an absolute waste of time.
Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel star as Annie and Jay, a married couple whose love life has lost the spark that once burned so bright that they felt the need to have sex no matter where they went. Annie now spends her time as a mommy blogger and Jay is, well, to be perfectly honest, the film never explains what Jay does for a living. You see him interacting with music a few times, so for the sake of this review we’ll say he simply works in the entertainment business. Anyway, between their two kids and the struggles of everyday life, our leads have found it increasingly difficult to make time for one another’s sexual needs. The answer? Get drunk on tequila and make a sex tape using every position outlined in The Joy Of Sex.
As the extensive marketing campaign leading up to Sex Tape’s release revealed, the couple’s intimate film does not stay private for very long. While the couple sleeps, their iPad uploads their recently shot video to a cloud server that automatically syncs all new content to every iPad Jay has ever owned. This would be fine if Jay still possessed all these tablets, but he’s made it a point to give them out as gifts every time he’s chosen to upgrade, resulting in half a dozen close friends and family now being in possession of his and Annie’s homemade porn. The simple solution to this problem would be to remote delete the file, which is something the leads realize far too late in the film, so instead they decide to do the first thing that comes to mind: visit everyone who has ever been given an iPad and manually delete the video from each device.
The way Annie and Jay decide to solve their problem baffled me, and from the reaction in my screening, many other viewers felt the same. It would make perfect sense if Annie and Jay were new to the world of cloud servers and tablets, but Jay has built their home network from the ground up himself, which is a point he makes more than once during the film. You’re telling me someone that in-tune with emerging digital trends who has already wired all his devices to the same cloud server has never had to delete something before? Ever? The idea of going door-to-door sounds like something a crazy relative who condones the use of technology would come up with, and I only use that example because only someone that far disconnected from the digital age would think the only solution is a manual delete on each device.
Beyond the problems with its plot, Sex Tape suffers from a significant lack of laughs and sex, or at least sex that is interesting to watch. Annie and Jay go at it pretty hot and heavy during the opening minutes of the film, which retraces the beginning of the couple’s sex life from college until now, but from the moment the film catches up to modern times there is almost no sex to be found anywhere, and that includes the making of the tape. By the time you do see the couple’s film, the footage revealed looks more like something you would expect to hear the Benny Hill theme over more than something anyone would find exciting, and even then it’s not funny. Just the same silly faces every comedy about sex has used since the beginning of time, only this time with Diaz and Segel’s vinegar strokes front and center.
Sex Tape‘s one saving grace comes in the form of its extensive, albeit criminally underutilized supporting cast. Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper shine bright as Annie and Jay’s best friends, and it’s mainly the interactions the two couples share that produce the bulk of the film’s comedic moments. Additionally, Rob Lowe plays the Slayer-loving CEO of a company that specializes in products for young children, and Jack Black takes a turn for the profane as the proprietor of PornHub. Both actors bring a strange and wonderful presence to the film, each seemingly challenging himself to convey a personality they have never before shown on the big screen, but neither offers enough relief to the mediocre moments they appear in to keep audiences engaged until the credit rolls.
By the time my screening of Sex Tape came to a close, I was itching to jump out of my seat and flee the theater in hopes of being able to one day pretend I did not waste my hard-earned income on a film that could very well take home one, if not many Razzies in early 2015. Unfortunately, my memory is too damn strong to shake the mediocrity of Kasdan’s latest creation from my mind. That’s my problem to deal with now, but it does not have to be yours just as long as you remember to skip Sex Tape. Hell, go about life as if you never even knew it existed. That way, you not only have the good fortune of skipping a completely horrible cinematic creation, but you may just make it out of 2014 with some respect still left for Cameron Diaz.
GRADE: D+
Review written by: James Shotwell Follow @utgjames
- 2015’s Most Underrated Films - December 29, 2015
- Passing The Torch: The End Of An Era For UTG - December 1, 2015
- UTG PREMIERE: Before The Streetlights – “Private Browser” - November 26, 2015
Posted in 
Tags: 