Sex Tape – Movie Review

Sex Tape – R
Release Date: Fri 18 Jul 2014

When the trailer for Sex Tape premiered earlier this year before The Other Woman, it got some big laughs and looked like a lot of fun. Both comedies have Cameron Diaz in a lead role, but where The Other Woman had her mostly playing straight opposite Leslie Mann, Sex Tape seems to only allow her two emotions. Her Annie is either laid back and understanding or in total freak out. Jay (Jason Segel) doesn’t fare any better as the writing for Sex Tape chose not to put any drama between it’s lead couple. It’s them against the world, except the world is a unknown amount of chaos of their own unintentional making.

Sex Tape suffers under the weight of having a great premise and no truly clever things to say about it. The idea of a couple making and losing a sex tape in the age of iPads and cloud syncing is a funny idea, but it felt like it could have been a short on Funny or Die and been just as much fun. Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper and Rob Lowe are given even less to do, with Corddry’s only real joke in the trailer and Lowe’s scenes being a riff on his Parks and Recreation character with a hidden party side.

It’s not as fully realized or given high enough stakes to compete with something like Adventures in Babysitting, a similar themed movie with a lot more heart and character. I am sure it will do well in the home video market for people too timid to see something called Sex Tape in the theater, but nudity is mostly used for comedy rather than sex appeal. Poor Jason Segel looked like he must have worked his ass off to be in the shape he is in for the movie.

Hannah, John M. and I saw it in the theater had a discussion in the car: