Sex Tape - Movie Review

            “This script is amazing. It’s so original, so smart, and thought-provoking. The dialogue is all so good and so compelling and it’s just… brilliant. It has a social commentary and it’s very mature and intelligent.”

            “What is this? An art house movie? No one’s gonna watch that. That won’t make any money. What will make money is another one of those raunchy comedies. Get me a script for one of those.”

            And now we have Sex Tape.

            Sex Tape starts out with the story of a couple, Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel, from when they met in college, from when (only a few months later) they get pregnant and married, from when they have been married for several years with two kids in elementary school and they have lost this “spark” they once had. They decide one night when their kids are staying at someone else’s house to try to regain that spark by have sex, which they have not done for a long time. Then, they stupidly decide to make a sex tape out of it, and when they stupidly don’t delete it, it gets uploaded to the Cloud and ends up on a lot of people’s iPads and iPhones and iPods and iOther things, so Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel go on an adventure to all of these people’s houses to get their iThings and delete the sex tape before they see it.

            I chose not to use the characters’ names because Diaz and Segel might as well be playing themselves. I’m not saying it’s their fault, but they are playing 1-Deminensional “characters” under a bad direction.

            From that summary I just gave alone, you already know what this movie will be like, how it will play out, and who its target audience is. If you like mindless, raunchy, stupid comedies, then there’s no need reading any further. You will like this movie. Its attempted laughs come about every thirty or so seconds. I’m not trying to demean those of you that will enjoy these types of movies; I’m just saying that you’ll probably enjoy this movie. Its target audience is people who enjoy raunchy, silly, mindless comedy. Anyway, for everyone else, you could enjoy this movie, but I’ll say there’s also a good chance you won’t. Of course it’s obvious that I did not like this movie.

            The lead actors are at least trying in this movie. I won’t quite say Diaz and Segel are good in the movie, but they were not awful. There was just nothing for them to walk off of. You could call the first 10 or so minutes of the movie character development, but we don’t really learn anything about the characters themselves. It’s just there for the plot. As for how the characters act for the rest of the movie, their actions are all incredibly stupid. With how stupid these characters really are, it was hard with me to sympathize with them in this bad situation that they’re in. Sometimes the stupid decisions they make are supposed to be funny. They are not. All of the stupid decisions throughout the film did for me was make me frustrated and ready to get out of there, because, of course, they are incredibly repetitive. The screenwriters didn’t know what other jokes to come up with, so they just decided to repeat some of their favorites.

            I guess now I should delve down into why the script is, in almost every way, awful. I’ll start out with the positive, the reason why the word “almost” is there. I actually did find 5 or 6 things in this movie funny. Now I’ll make that sound like it’s less than a positive by saying that there are between 100 and 140 attempts at humor in this movie. But it’s not just that the jokes aren’t funny, it’s that they’re all so lazy and unoriginal. Barely any of the attempts at humor in this movie are things that have not been done before. And I don’t mean specific things, like a character getting a laxative put in his/her drink and having to poop a lot. I mean ideas of jokes. Like… a character is making an analogy, but mixes it up and makes some gross, “funny” thing. All the screenwriters had to do was fill it in. Not every joke is written that way, but every joke has at least one thing wrong with it. Almost every joke is complete slapstick. It is forced, in-your-face comedy that is not funny at all. The subtler comedy is, the funnier it is. When comedy is made into something huge and grandiose, it loses at (nonexistent) humor attached to it. All of the comedy is so obvious thrown directly at the audience. There are some jokes that were taken so far that even the people that laughed at it in the beginning won’t be laughing anymore.

            The movie is also unbelievable. A lot of the events in the movie are over-the-top, ridiculous, and unbelievable. Also, the jokes are not the only clichéd aspects of the movie. The characters are as well… and the plot. And the ending of the film was completely dues-ex-machina. And… also… the only reason any characters are introduced into the film is just to progress the plot. Everything is used as a plot device. The script is that lazy.

            But the direction of the film is also not good. It’s very stale and it doesn’t feel like the actors really had anything to work off of. It just feels like the movie is not made very well. Like the studios were trying to make this movie so quickly and get it into theatres as soon as possible. And that’s not just because the people in the movie are trying to hurry and get to places as quickly as possible. Every take seems like it was the first they shot. The actors didn’t get a chance to do their best work. It seems like the scene could have been done better with the same style. I wondered with every scene, “Is that the best take they could get?” The whole thing feels rushed.

            One last bad thing I have to say about the film is drama. It doesn’t work at all. It is always in the middle of comedy. It is always out of place. There’ll be a series of jokes, and then it’ll randomly turn into a drama for 15 seconds, then back to comedy again.

            Sex Tape’s terrible script and rushed production makes for a completely unfunny and dull movie. A small amount of jokes were funny, but there aren’t really any more positives. I guess saying that the actors are trying is a plus for the movie, but it didn’t add much of anything to the movie thanks to the script and direction. No, this movie is not awful. At least it’s only 94 minutes long. The point is that it is bad movie that anyone that’s not in its target audience should go see.