Jay (Jason Segal) and Anna (Cameron Diaz) are a loving couple with two kids and jobs that everyone seems to have in the movies – he is in the music business (again) and she is a blogger. The love remains, the respect is obvious, but the evil being called Married… with Children has callously murdered their sex life.
Free ‘alone time’ is at a premium, and when it becomes available Jay and Anna prefer to spend it on pausing for breath rather than pawing each other breathlessly. They need a spark to liven up the boudoir, and after several doomed attempts they find their muse in the form of a video camera, which leads to a three hour marathon session. (I wasn’t aware that abstaining builds coital credits that can be combined!?! Maybe the first 178 minutes were spent thinking ‘pretend her real name isn’t Cameron. Pretend her real name isn’t Cameron!)
With the urges sated and a new significant notch on the headboard, Jay and Anna propose to never again let life get in the way of things, then they realise that (current events alert) their hugely personal has been uploaded to the ‘cloud’ and automatically linked to their quasi-mailing list of close friends and family.
After the obligatory finger pointing and panic, a late night trip to round up all devices that may carry the video seems the only alternative.
Sex Tape wants badly to be an American Pie, Apatow type saucy sex comedy, but like the late thirty something couple in the film it no longer knows how to be dangerous, risky and sexy, so instead it settles for a confusing and bewildering barrage of allegedly naughty behaviors. Drugs are taken, animals beaten, young children swear incessantly, a middle age couple has frenzied back seat sex in a car.
And all the while the film asks desperately “isn’t this all just kinds of R rated craziness?” before it ends with everyone learning a lesson about what love is.
Segal and Dial are perfectly fine as a couple, and yes they both nude up and join in the debauchery, but the fun seems forced, the raunchiness lacking in an edge and the laughs intermittent at best.
This is the film equivalent of the drunk single auntie speaking inappropriately at the family gathering, slightly desperate for attention, reaching further for laughs that aren’t there, and only growing louder. You just end up feeling sorry for them.
Final Rating – 5.5 / 10. As ‘dangerous’ as a Miley Cyrus concert.
