Slap and tickle and slapstick meet to varying degrees of not very funny in this comedy starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as a married couple who attempt to spice up their love life with a home-made skin-flick. Extreme product placement, a lack of chemistry between the two leads and a tame script co-written by Segel and long-time writing partner Nicholas Stoller fails to deliver. Thankfully there are solid supporting turns from Rob Lowe and Jack Black.
Opening like Sex and the City, with Annie (Cameron Diaz) tapping away on her keyboard like a wholesome Carrie Bradshaw she recalls her husband’s many erections of years gone by and how they have slipped from her grip. The audience is given a potted history of the couple’s relationship. The college years, the marriage, the honeymoon period, the babies and now the lack of sex in their busy lives. Meanwhile husband Jay (Jason Segel) frets over ball sacks and how many iPads he can carry with a fellow DJ.
One night the couple get extremely drunk and re-enact The Joy of Sex on camera which is then synced on all the iPad devices Jay has generously given as gifts to family members, friends, the mail man and Annie’s boss. Borrowing from a few late Eighties comedies (where perhaps this film belongs) the two set out to retrieve the iPads and delete all trace of the video. Swept aside are the privacy issues of the iCloud, the world wide web (the results of which have been smeared across the internet this week) and their intimacy problems in favour of a farcical chase around LA.
Rob Lowe gamely mocks his past (his famous fall from grace included one of the first sex tape scandals back in 1988) as Annie’s boss, with a visit to his grand mansion proving a high point. Its walls are adorned like Saddam Hussein’s palace with weird fantasy art (cheekily Disney inspired) and his one-to-one conversation with Annie is an enlightening delve into the lives of the rich and famous and their ever-changing public personas.
Shame is what drives this couple to go to such great lengths, with Annie forced to take drugs and Jay mauled by a dog, and it's a one-note joke that doesn't really satisfy. None of the issues that arise, the importance of data protection, nor the middle-age insecurities are properly or amusingly explored and unfortunately Sex Tape is severely lacking in any sizzle or sass. If it's funny you're after Nicholas Stoller's Bad Neighbours is a far better recent example of the coming to terms with adulthood comedy.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Sex Tape
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