Sex Tape, despite its raunchy title and topic, is all about living the good old American suburban life: keeping your marriage together, saving face with the neighbours, and reaching for the pot of gold even when your more outré activities make the rounds. Here it’s a DIY sex tape turning up on the most inconvenient iPads.
Cameron Diaz, with her scrubbed clean good looks and sparkly blue eyes, always makes sex seem health-full, as well as erotic. And before you ask, yes, we do get to see the tape she and hubby (Jason Segel) have put together. It’s a bit of a suspenseful wait: will we or won’t we is the anticipatory tension of the film. The main idea is not new: How to solve the problem of putting the pizzazz back into a once-hot relationship, worn down by domestic routine. In a partial parallel, sparks and laughs flew in their earlier pairing in Bad Teacher, also directed by Jake Kasdan, while this time out, Diaz is as good, Segel merely mediocre as a techie who screwed up and saved their tape instead of wiping it.
This plot device turned out to be timely, with celeb self-porn getting hacked recently. As one character says in a line ominously hinting at our universal fear of exposure: “No one really understands The Cloud.”
Sex Tape is just too broad in spots, though Rob Lowe hits his marks as a boss with a kink up his sleeve as well as another anatomical part. The most campy cameo is by an uncredited Jack Black playing a sweet-natured, moralistic YouPorn exec declaring that people turn to porn only when there is something wrong with a relationship.
C’mon, now. That’s real Hollywood hokum.
Sex Tape | Directed by Jake Kasdan (USA 2014) with Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Lowe. With subtitles. Starts September 11
