Review of Sex Tape (2014) by Liam C — 02 Aug 2014

This is why I don't use the Cloud! Not because I do things like this but because of horrifying scenarios like this, that even as Jason Segel's character says, 'nobody understands the Cloud, it's a fucking mystery' and I agree.

Sex Tape actually started out with some promise, surprisingly, but as it went on it just got more and more silly until the real-ish premise is just completely forgotten about for oddball scenarios. It was never going to be a serious look at a couples sex life fizzling out, it's called Sex Tape- there is only so much you can expect, but there is enough believability at the start of it to keep you interested in seeing what happens to this couple.

The acting overall is really mixed. Cameron Diaz really did try though, she was the only one that was holding this thing together and she was the most grounded one and that is saying a lot considering how over the top everything got. If this was the first movie I saw Jason Segel in, I would say that he was a bad actor who really does not put much effort in at all. He's a funny guy and everybody knows him for HIMYM, so I don't know what happened here, he looks like he did not want to be there at all but then he co-wrote the script, so I really don't know what was happening but then other times it looked like he was really into it. Everybody else is just a really odd exaggerated cartoon. I mean, Rob Lowe's character, what was all that about and why was he even in this, considering what he was involved in, I saw that video on why he joined and that didn't even make sense.

Thing is, everything up until that moment where they go into Rob Lowe's house is pretty normal, there are no stupid chases or slapstick humor, but right after that scene, that goes on way too long, everything just goes off the rails and the person sending the texts was odd and Jack Black, what? It felt like two people wrote the script, one person did the first half and then someone else did the second half but three people wrote this... I don't know. Cameron Diaz went nude first time in a movie and Jason Segel lost weight, for this movie?

This movie could have been funnier if some of the lines were delivered differently, most notably with Jason Segel, for example there's a line where he said 'your friend takes pictures of your dick?' and he pauses too much in that sentence for it to be funny and more situations happen like this. You see a scene that is gearing up some way that you expect but goes the opposite and not in a good way, the audience I was with were ready to laugh but just went 'oh' pretty much in unison. There were also some lines that seemed like they were forced in and I couldn't tell if they were meant to be taken a sexual way or not. Someone says 'they wanted to stick their head in' was that a sex joke or not? It's not said in any kind of sexual scene but these kind of movies always want to make jokes like that whenever they can. Also, there were way too many pop culture references and it dates the movie badly.

Some scenes felt really out of place, there is a scene in a car where their daughter is essentially asking what is the point of life and there are some other scenes like this and it is just completely out of place and doesn't go anywhere. The young daughter asking the questions doesn't go anywhere; the weird son subplot doesn't go anywhere; the person who was sending the text doesn't go anywhere because having a funny conclusion. The product placement does fit, for once, the whole story is centred around it, so it makes sense even if some scenes are too in your face, there is one scene where an iPad gets thrown out a window and Segel says something along the lines of 'the craftsmanship on these things is incredible'- really? You're already showing Apple products throughout the running time quite frequently in a Sony Pictures movie no less, are scenes like that necessary. Maybe because it shows Apple products in a negative light that's why they allowed it? Who knows. Something cool though is that when a character gets cut, their cuts stay there for the duration of the movie, and didn't just disappear because that scene finished, nothing major but still something I noticed.

However, after all is said and done, I didn't hate it, which might sound strange considering I was so negative for a majority of the review but I wasn't looking at my watch every five minutes waiting for it to finish and I did chuckle every now and then. It was interesting to see what would happen next as well as how absurd it got. So, it might fail as a comedy but I don't feel like I wasted my time, I've seen far worse and as a something I watched on a Sunday afternoon, it served as fine time waster, strangely. I thought it was okay but this review just expresses my disappointment with it. I think with a rewrite and the oddball second half taken out (or make the first half more oddball) it could be a raunchy, fun, comedy. Hell, it could have even been connected to Bad Teacher in some way, like most people thought. Again, it's called Sex Tape, so what do you expect. As it is, it's fine, the only thing 'crazy' about it is the name of the movie.