Sex Tape (Movie Review)

Rating:

The “1-4-0″: @SexTapeMovie is a rated R comedy that delivers an interesting premise but whose execution is stretched beyond its witty concept.   

The Gist: A couple with kids tries to spark up their sex lives by taping themselves to disastrous results when the video is uploaded to other peoples iPads. A race to recover the iPads becomes the bulk of the story.

What Works: The premise is full of appeal and Cameron Diaz once again shines brighter than the rest of the cast. Besides that, there isn’t much else to extol.

What Doesn’t Work: This movie should have been an hour long, because there wasn’t enough substance to carry it for an 1hr and 34m. When you don’t have enough material, what you witness is “dragging,” a series of scenes that have a character subjugated to a problem that seems to have no end. In this case, director Jake Kasdan had this predicament happen to him when Jason Segel couldn’t seem to shake of a German Shepherd. It was too long, all the appeal had fizzled out early on and the story was not moving forward at all. That’s not a sign of elite screenwriting from Nicholas Stoller, Jason Segel and Kate Angelo. Ultimately, this element is the main reason we can point to for the film not reaching its promising potential. On a side note, Jason Segel’s weight-loss is admirable and he’s in the best shape of his life, alas it became negatively distracting because he looks valetudinarian. He looks like somebody completely different. I guess once you sell an image, its hard for audiences to accept a different one.

Pay or Nay? Nay. The film is not a family film, regardless of what anyone else suggests otherwise. It is a movie mainly constituted of a lot of PG-13 sex scenes and a plethora of cursing. Family seems to be the secondary or tertiary hook in this gimmicky slice of married life. In regards to its comedic sensibilities, Sex Tape is ordinary and offers very few laughs compared to dozens of other comedies much better than this such as Neighbors, which is abetter made film and coincidentally boasts a great family sub-theme.

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