Starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segal, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper, Rob Lowe, Nat Faxon, Jack Black
Directed By: Jake Kasdan
Good God. Hold on. JAKE KASDAN? Until I went to IMDB and found out who directed this, I had no idea it was the director of Bad Teacher, Walk Hard, and Zero Effect. Now I’m even more disappointed. And the film was written by Jason Segal? What is going on in my life right now?
I think the idea that I watched this show in a theatre, where I was one of only three people, and one of the three people fell asleep early on and snored throughout the whole film, shows how incredibly desensitized the American male culture is to sex in films. We’re just like… oh whatever. Who cares. She’s not even naked. None of this shocks us anymore… so we’re going to fall asleep.
This film suffers even worse from what I felt Neighbors suffered from, which is hoping that sex gets laughs… just because. Sex Tape is at least less crude about it, but it still doesn’t get any laughs. The funniest bits really are Jason Segal running around the house being chased by a dog, and Rob Lowe’s bizarrely specific one-in-a-million character. The funniest parts have nothing to do with sex, or the sex tape.
In fact, I was actually disappointed by Segal, who (when I was watching the film) gave me the impression he hadn’t read the script. He was kind of in a lazy daze the whole movie, looking to Diaz to pull him along through the film. Segal and Diaz have odd chemistry issues, due to the nature of filming, they’ll have chemistry, and then not have chemistry, and then it’s back. Clearly these two were strangers at the beginning of the shoot, and finally became friends by the end, but their chemistry is haphazard because of it.
The supporting cast (other than Lowe) is wasted. Nat Faxon is in ONE scene, and feels like he was meant to be in more, and his stuff just got left on the cutting room floor. In fact, this film feels heavily edited. I never want to see this film again, but I’d be open to watching a 2 hour edit of this film, just to see what the story was meant to look like.
Cameron Diaz was good, not great. She handled the material well, but she was better in The Other Woman this year. It’s definitely one of those films where all the funny parts are in the preview (and some of the scenes in the preview aren’t in the movie, and should have been). The movie is a huge letdown, on many levels. It made me laugh one or two times, but mostly it gets lost in a sea of bad editing, and unimpressive acting on a poorly written script.
In concept, this was probably a funny idea, but it was just so poorly executed. I’m not a prude, I don’t turn my nose up at lowbrow comedy, it’s not that at all. This just wasn’t a successfully executed film.
And in case you came here for this… there isn’t really any nudity in this film. Not even from Segal. Just a lot of butts and side-boob. So if that’s why you wanted to see the film, you can also stay home.
FINAL GRADE: C-
