Sex Tape

SEX TAPE (Jake Kasdan, 2014)

To spice up a love life that’s been dulled by their focus on work and raising two kids Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) decide to record their most intimate moments in SEX TAPE. Jay sets up his iPad to capture them trying out all of the positions in 1970s manual THE JOY OF SEX. After their three-hour lovemaking session Annie tells Jay to delete the video file, but before he gets around to doing so, an app syncs their dirty home movie to all of his devices.

Jay’s error of procrastination wouldn’t be so problematic if he didn’t hand out his old iPads like Christmas cards. Friends, family, and acquaintances, including the mailman and toy company CEO Hank (Rob Lowe), who’s considering buying Annie’s mommy blog, possess tablet computers with access to their sex tape. When Jay receives an anonymous text commenting on their video, he realizes that it is no longer private. Mortified at the thought of who might see the video, Jay and Annie scramble to collect the iPads and delete the file before the current owners discover it.

SEX TAPE sets out to mine the main couple’s humiliation for laughs and to consider the stresses on a marriage that can lead to a loss of closeness, yet it does neither particularly well. Annie and Jay’s embarrassing predicament seemingly puts them in awkward interpersonal situations, but instead of using cringe comedy to explore how the video changes the dynamics in facing people they know, Segel, Nicholas Stoller, and Kate Angelo’s screenplay gets bogged down in a plot-intensive hunt for the devices. The distractions Annie and Jay concoct and obstacles they encounter while searching for the iPads keep things broad and safe while avoiding the sensitive relationship stuff that is the film’s most logical source of humor. Aside from one scene in which their friends Robby and Tess (Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper) fess up to viewing the sex tape, Annie and Jay’s panic is rooted in envisioning what-if scenarios than confronting the consequences of the file being distributed.

Early on SEX TAPE addresses the daily grind that can put distance between a husband and wife, suggesting that it might use humor to say something about how work and parenting obligations in modern life challenge marriages. Unlike NEIGHBORS, which finds comedic potential in new parents’ worries of losing their youthful edge, SEX TAPE introduces its thematic hook and ignores it until a pat resolution about how the experience lets Annie and Jay rediscover one another. Like an insecure adolescent bragging about falsified sexual experiences, the film uses frank vulgarity about adult situations while seeming juvenile.

SEX TAPE requires granting it a lot of latitude regarding the protagonists’ limited technological savvy, especially when taking their dimly illuminated web-based professions into account. Although the film’s idiot plot undermines its credibility, it makes some humorous observations about how today’s computers are treated as mystical objects worthy of being worshiped and feared. Our pockets hold devices capable of answering any vocalized question, no matter how silly, and sowing the seeds of our ruin if misused, whether by accident or ignorance.

Grade: C-

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (Jake Kasdan, 2007)

From humble southern roots Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) rises to the top of the music charts, hits bottom, and, of course, finds redemption in the end. WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY tells this familiar show business tale, but unlike other year-end, award-trawling dramatizations of celebrity success and suffering, this one is a goof on rags-to-riches biographical films.

Dewey sets hearts aflutter and ministers a-fulminatin' from practically the first chords his teenage rock and roll band strums at a talent show. Convinced to make a life of his own in music, Dewey and his soon-to-be wife Edith (Kristen Wiig) leave with stars in their eyes and Pa Cox's (Raymond J. Barry) harsh words nipping at their heels.

Sure enough, Dewey presses a hit record in no time flat, but accompanying his meteoric success are the usual pitfalls: orgies, drugs, and, when he and Edith separate, a fight for custody of the chimp. The primary other woman is Darlene Madison (Jenna Fischer), a virtuous backup singer who gets Dewey hotter than a pepper sprout. Through the decades she drifts in and out of his life as easily as Dewey changes styles, including a Dylanesque firebrand phase and endless studio tinkerer like Brian Wilson.

WALK HARD writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow borrow the framework and story from WALK THE LINE. Bits of RAY and conventions from other biopic are included for good measure. Mostly, though, it's a scene for scene answer to the Johnny Cash film down to the way shots are framed and lit.

Direct, feature-length parodying of a single film runs the risk of punchlines being anticipated before the set-ups are made. Once WALK HARD'S corresponding WALK THE LINE scenes are recognized, many jokes can be predicted with ease. Sometimes it is funnier to foresee what's coming, but when the level fails to rise above the kinds of wisecracks a rowdy audience might sling at the screen, the humor needs to be freshened. (This goes double for the extensive wordplay riffing on Dewey's surname.)

The film is more assured when it makes mincemeat of tried and true biopic clichés. WALK HARD makes a mockery of actors unconvincingly playing a wide range of character ages, the overnight fame ascension montage (done here in an afternoon), and heavy-handed views of the past through the eyes of the present, often the most cringeworthy moments in period films. (Think of the confident professions of skepticism about something then unproven or unaccepted but now well-known or commonplace).

Reilly is game for anything Kasdan and Apatow throw at him. He deserves points for keeping a straight face in a two-shot close-up the likes of which won't be found in any other Hollywood films. Reilly also proves himself versatile as a singer, equally at ease with a ballad suited for Roy Orbison, upbeat rockabilly in the vein of Cash and Elvis, and a cryptic, singsongy Dylan tune.

What he lacks is a steady comedic partner. In WALK THE LINE June Carter and the romance were front and center with The Man in Black, but WALK HARD, focused more on stringing sketches than building narrative, underutilizes its potential lead actress. Fischer is called upon to do no more than look foxy as Darlene. Even her funniest scene, the subtlety-free, double entendre-dripping "Let's Duet", finds the actress lip-syncing.

Without question the film's highlights are the credible imitations of pop music spanning at least three decades. For all of the care and creativity put into WALK HARD'S original songs, the rest of the film feels less inspired and maybe a little lazy.

Grade: C