Movie Review: Sex Tape


I know Cameron Diaz and Jason Segal have chemistry together - I've seen it before, in Bad Teacher. So where has that chemistry gone, and why does Sex Tape have almost zero laughs?

Annie (Diaz) and Jay (Segal) used to have sex all day, every day, when they were in college. Annie later gets pregnant, they get married, and two kids later, they're having trouble regaining that "spark," as well as even having time to have sex. They decide to make a sex tape by doing all the positions in The Joy of Sex, and they film it with Jay's new iPad. Annie later tells him to delete the film, but Jay does not, and it goes up to "the cloud" - and syncs with other iPads that Jay has given to friends and family members as gifts. Annie and Jay must retrieve and wipe those iPads before her mom, her new boss, or even the mailman sees the video.

I will say that my first nitpicky thing about this film was explained fairly early - why would Jay not wipe all of the iPads he gave as gifts, or at least change the Apple IDs? The reason for this is because of his "awesome music," as he puts it, and the custom playlists he makes for everyone - he uses an app that syncs all his new music with the gifted iPads, so that his friends and family can listen to the music. He has a new app he's using that syncs videos, too, apparently, which is why everyone now has his sex tape.

Oh, did I say "first nitpicky" thing? Because I have a LOT to nitpick about this movie. Annie is a successful blogger in the film, so you would think maybe she would know how computers work - apparently not. A running joke is "where IS the cloud, does anyone know?" and apparently no one does, even though Jay also has like 12,000 Apple devices - iMac, iPad, iPhone, etcetera. A neighborhood boy (Harrizon Holzer) later points out to Jay that he could have just remote wiped the iPads instead of running around town trying to retrieve them, which is what they later do for the mailman's iPad; granted, he might not have known this, but he could have Googled it before striking out all over town (and yes, we wouldn't have a movie then, but trust me when I say that would have been beneficial ...).

No, definitely skip this movie. It reminded me a little bit of the recent Moms' Night Out, yet that movie was far superior to this film. The funniest things in the movie - even though they only made me chuckle - were some of the weird shenanigans going on; ie, Jay and Annie arrive at her new boss's house (Rob Lowe) to get back an iPad she gave him (why would you gift an iPad to a guy who wants to buy your blog, also?!), and it turns out he has all these Disney-esque paintings where his face is superimposed, like from The Lion King, Peter Pan, and more.

Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper are two of the only funny characters in this film, as friends of Annie and Jay who are kind of interested in watching the video before it gets wiped from their iPad. Nat Faxon also has one scene in this film. Unfortunately, I can't even recommend this movie as a Redbox rental or to watch on Netflix, and what scares me a little is that I overheard a few people saying "That movie was the best!" as I left the theater; I'm hoping these moviegoers just haven't seen many movies, because if they have, it means the film industry has definitely been declining in terms of quality content.

Sex Tape is currently playing in theaters and is rated R with a runtime of 94 minutes. 1.5 stars out of 5.

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