I’m going to be brutally honest and admit that I’m not entirely sure what to say about this movie. It’s sort of just there. It’s not offensively terrible and unwatchable, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.
Sex Tape is a new comedy starring Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz as a married couple who decide that their marriage has become boring so, naturally, they decide to make a sex tape (because that’s the first thing you’d do in that situation right? Right guys?). The basic premise is that the sex tape that they make gets out into the open and they have to stop more people from seeing it by destroying a bunch of iPads. This is supposed to lead to some wacky capers, but it really doesn’t. It kind of just leads to some very stale, overdone comedy. The performances certainly don’t help either, in particular Diaz, who just looks bored the entire film. The 2 leads have absolutely no chemistry, and it makes for very boring watching. The film does have its moments but they’re too few and far between to actually count for much. The funniest character in the entire movie is played by Kumail Nanjiani, but he’s in one scene. Which is an absolute waste, really.
The movie’s strength (however little of it there is) lies mainly in character-based humour. Rob Lowe’s character has an interesting side to him, and some of the situational humour he provides is quite entertaining, if almost totally under-utilised. Lowe’s performance is decent and he’s one of the few people who might actually leave the movie on their CV. Segel’s performance is fine, but he never once looked as though he were enjoying himself. I miss the Jason Segel from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, who had that glint in his eye, as though he were a kid in a sweet shop enjoying every moment he was playing this character. Both Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper get some laughs, but all of this does virtually nothing to help the fact that the movie is just really not very good.
A major problem this movie has is its product placement. Listen, I appreciate that almost every movie has to do it in order to finance something (or someone), but this film soars it to new heights. The entire movie is practically an ad for Apple. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and really grated on me for entire film. It’s so blatant and in your face; from the close-ups on the iPhone, to the fact that every person in this universe seems to exclusively own Apple products as though it were some sort of Apple-lead dictatorship. The entire movie was just crammed full of Apple. I swear, there’s even a placed line. At one point in the movie, Jason Segel says, and I quote, “The build quality of these is fantastic”. It comes across so fake, and looks like he died a little inside when he said it. It’s probably the worst and most in-your-face product placement I’ve seen in a movie, ever. Josie and the Pussycats had less, and that was basically a movie ABOUT product placement.
All of this adds up to the film just being so disappointing. I was really hoping to like it and I think that’s what angered me the most. The whole thing just feels like an uncomfortable mess and a waste of time. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. It tries to be raunchy and sexy, which is fine, but it seems like none of the actors involved wanted to play those parts the way they did. So it ends up as some weird cross between a family flick and a sexy, raunchy adult comedy and I’m telling you now, nobody wants to see those two things mixed.
Editor’s note:
Today, both Sony and their marketing team sent out marketing material about protecting your photos in the cloud. While I appreciate they were going for tongue-in-cheek, it came across in very bad taste. This marketing material was sent because, and I quote, “in light of the privacy violations that unfolded over the weekend there’s no time like the present to get a little tech-savvy”. The hack, intrusion, attack, whatever you want to call it was NOT the result of lackadaisical security on behalf of those celebrities. It was a clear-cut violation of privacy, and a personal attack on each and every one of those celebrities. This marketing material is nothing but a seedy attempt to ride the wave of talk that surrounds this issue, and everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves for it.
