Film About Couple Accidentally Upload Sex Tape

April 12, 2022 Post a Comment

Three years agone, Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel co-starred for director Jake Kasdan in "Bad Teacher" and had an enjoyable, raunchy chemical science. She was the bad instructor of the pic'south title: a drunken vixen who was simply working with children considering she needed money for a boob job. He was the irreverent, easygoing gym teacher who saw through her flaws and schemes and wanted to hang out with her anyway. It was a one-joke movie, just in that location were enough shadings and variations inside that 1 joke to brand it somewhat fun.

Now, Diaz and Segel co-star for Kasdan again in "Sex Record," just their characters are and so indiscernible as actual human beings, it's hard to tell who they are, much less whether they have whatsoever sort of enjoyable, raunchy chemical science. She'southward a married, stay-calm mother of two who writes a blog about her family unit, and that's about it. He's her husband, who works at a radio station in some chapters, maybe...? They make a sex tape to spice up their formerly frisky marriage and it accidentally goes public. It'south a one-joke movie that feels similar a i-joke movie.

It'due south a high-concept premise that ends upward beingness preposterous and riddled with plot holes, and the way these fools fling themselves into an all-night, madcap adventure to right their wrong is painfully strained and unfunny. Likewise, the whole notion of making a sex tape and then beingness ashamed of information technology seems sort of quaint at this signal—every bit if everyone involved missed the zeitgeist for maximum relevance and edginess about five years ago.

High-tech devices to create quality, practice-it-yourself cinema environment us more than e'er, equally we well know. Nowhere is this more truthful than in "Sex Tape," which is essentially one long commercial for Apple tree products wrapped in a toothless, feel-skillful comedy almost a longtime married couple reconnecting. It'south amazing, the quality of the camera on the iPad that's propped deeply on meridian of the laundry basket as Diaz'due south Annie and Segel'southward Jay re-enact every single pose in the iconic '70s tome "The Joy of Sexual practice." And wow—the Cloud! It'south so powerful as it sucks in every final blip of digital information in ways no one could possibly understand (including the people who made this movie).

Things were simpler back when Annie and Jay were immature. We first run across the couple in college, cavorting like bunny rabbits anywhere and everywhere. This is their main personality trait: They similar having sex with each other. Or at least, they did. Cut to 10 years later (which would make Diaz 32 when she's actually almost 42, which I know because we have the same verbal birthday, merely whatever, it'south a pocket-sized lark). They still love and desire each other, simply between work, kids, school, business firm, etc., they only don't accept the same time or energy to maul each other the mode they once did. It happens.

When Annie sends the kids to Grandma's house for the dark, she and Jay endeavour to utilise the opportunity to get their freak on, merely they initially fumble. A few tequila shots later, though, and they're starring in their ain homemade porn video. Diaz and Segel go super naked and seem game for every goofy move that comes their way, but there's something stiff (if you lot'll pardon the pun) well-nigh the way Kasdan stages these scenes and most Segel's performance in general. He's noticeably slimmed downwards and toned upward since he famously went full-frontal in 2008's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." But he also seems to have lost the loose, amiable puppy-canis familiaris quality that made him and so appealing. He's so oddly inert here, it'southward every bit if he's been encased in wax.

Jay promises he'll erase the video, but not only does he forget to do that, he as well inadvertently sends information technology to a bunch of people through a new syncing app. In one of the many contrived plot devices that keep this attempt rumbling along, Jay has a addiction of giving old iPads to friends and relatives as gifts. So now all these people have admission to their antics, which lasted iii hours. ("Sex Tape" itself feels that long, even though it's only well-nigh 90 minutes.)

The script from Segel, his longtime friend and collaborator Nicholas Stoller and Kate Angelo ("The Back-up Plan") finds Annie and Jay scurrying all over Los Angeles to scoop up these tablets earlier anyone sees the movie. Well, anyone else, that is—at least 1 person has seen it and is sending Jay anonymous, ambiguous texts in a subplot that feels forced. Jay keeps making bad decisions, Annie keeps getting bellyaching with him. Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper, who play the couple's best friends, continue for the ride but mostly become to waste.

The whole process is extremely wearisome, merely one of their stops—which amounts to an extended detour—is then random and unexpected that information technology breathes much-needed life into the film. Annie and Jay visit the lavish mansion of Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), the cardigan-wearing CEO of the family-friendly company that's on the verge of paying large money for Annie'due south web log. (Some other detail that seems distractingly impossible.) Inexplicably, Annie has given Hank her iPad, and then she has to knock on his door and distract him while Jay searches for the device.

The casting of Lowe, who notoriously suffered his ain sexual activity-tape scandal in the late 1980s, at first seems like an in-joke that's too easy. Simply the more his character reveals himself—and a complication that'due south sadly lacking in everyone else—the more you realize how cleverly it taps into Lowe's longtime chops every bit a standout supporting player.

I won't give abroad what happens between Diaz and Lowe, just I will say that this is the actor with whom she has real chemical science—and this is the shocking video yous'll really want to see.