Sex Tape

For many celebrities, having a sex tape leaked online is almost like a badge of honor. For the rest of us, the reaction might be more akin to the couple in Sex Tape, which aims low and scores accordingly.

For those not seeking to be intellectually challenged, there are some moments of absurd low-brow hilarity. But by the end, this broad sex farce remains pretty limp.

It follows Jay (Jason Segel) and Annie (Cameron Diaz), whose romantic intimacy has dwindled considerably in the decade since they got married and decided to have a family. So in an effort to spice things up, they ship the kids off to grandma’s house for a night and decide to record themselves experimenting with every position in The Joy of Sex.

The marathon session had the intended effect for the two of them, but an unintended consequence once the video is linked to various iPads that Jay distributed both personally and professionally, including to his best friend (Rob Corddry) and to Annie’s new boss (Rob Lowe). Their embarrassment turns into a madcap effort to hide their private moment from public view.

There’s a cautionary tale about technology and privacy buried somewhere in here, but that would be granting the film a much deeper level of analysis than it deserves. Segel and Diaz achieve a playful, good-natured chemistry that might have been more useful if both performances weren’t compromised by the ridiculous mechanics within the script.

By nature, the film requires a tremendous suspension of disbelief throughout, such as Jay’s convenient hit-and-miss knowledge of the functions of his iPad and online storage techniques. His technological know-how creates the problem, but his naivete bypasses simple remedies in favor of a convoluted effort to solve it.

Things start to run off the rails during the attempted cover-up and retrieval of the video, which reveals that the material probably would have been more successful as a short subject than a feature. Of course, that would have rendered it much less commercially viable. There’s your trade-off.

Visually, director Jake Kasdan (Bad Teacher) uses plenty of camera trickery to obscure private parts, so much so that it becomes part of the joke, such as during the sequence involving the sex tape itself. As such, those looking for titillation based on the title alone might be disappointed.

Rated R, 94 minutes.