First things first, this movie shouldn’t be called Sex Tape. It should be called Apple Products Presents Adult Rom-Com, such is the invasive nature of all things Apple. Look at the shiny new iPad, and let the actors tell you about its awesome camera technology and durability! Look at all the iPhones, iMacs and other Apple products and ask yourself how could you live your life without them? Secondly, it REALLY shouldn’t be called Sex Tape, as there isn’t a single tape to be seen anywhere in the film, but we guess Sex QuickTime Movie doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) are still very much in love after two kids and several years of marriage, but the sexual spark has gone out of their relationship. To celebrate her selling her motherhood blog to a big corporation, she bungles the kids off to her mothers and they finally have a night alone together, eventually culminating in the idea of recording themselves “doing it”. Afterwards, instead of deleting it, they accidentally send it up onto a shared server, and everyone they’re connected with can download it at the touch of a button. Cue the crazed couple driving around town all night to destroy the evidence.
Diaz and Segel reteam with director Jake Kasdan of the equally good-idea-not-quite-fully-realised Bad Teacher, and just like last time we’re shown the fringes of potential, but mostly it just feels like the screenwriter involved is slumming it. Once or twice we’re treated to some humorously insightful conversations about the gender divide in pornography and the strains of keeping a marriage alive, but those are swallowed up by elongated scenes of Segel wrestling with a dog, or Diaz and potential future boss Rob Lowe doing cocaine and listening to Slayer because… well, just because.
Fair play to the leads for attempting to let loose and bare all for the sake of a few laughs – even though we’re all used to seeing Segel in the nip – but they’re overshadowed by a plot that is overcomplicated and underfunny. Sex Tape may involve some decent performances, but we’ve seen actual porn movies with better jokes than this.