--- description: As a married couple trying to revive their love life, Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel prove that the homemade porn industry may be thriving, but the romantic comedy is nearly extinct title: Sex Tape Movie Review: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel Star in Bawdy Rom-Com image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c46795ccb274b6e/69869bee35ba6f1ef1c03090/df-00594_r.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # REVIEW: Don't Dare Watch This _Sex Tape_ by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 16, 2014 3:24 PM CUT  Annie (Cameron Diaz and Jay (Jason Segel) in Columbia Pictures' comedy SEX TAPE. Annie (Cameron Diaz and Jay (Jason Segel) in Columbia Pictures' comedy SEX TAPE.Claire Folger—© 2013 CTMG, Inc. by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jul 16, 2014 3:24 PM CUT With her blond good looks, her knowing cheer, and a smile that spreads across her face like an earthquake’s fault line, Cameron Diaz is a natural for romantic comedy. In her new, R-rated _Sex Tape_, she plays Annie, wife of Jason Segel’s Jay, and 10 years after they fell in love, she finds that their routine of work and parenthood has sapped the erotic ecstasy they once felt just by _staring_ at each other. On her chatty blog, she asks, “How the hell do you get it back?” You might pose the same question about the rom-com; these are perilous times for one of Hollywood’s richest and most reliable genres. Maybe modern culture is the culprit. The old trope of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl — a love story promising permanence — seems utterly out of sync with an age when boy and girl meet online, hook up in college, never need marry and, if they do, have a 50% chance of getting a no-fault divorce. Or perhaps we should blame bromance: the bonding of man to man has nearly replaced the guy-gal model. **(READ: Mary Pols on** [**Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel in** **_Bad Teacher_**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/06/24/cameron-diaz-in-bad-teacher-whats-her-motivation/ "undefined")**)** Whatever the reason, no period in film history has been so rich in actresses primed to play romantic comedy and so poor in the quality of the movies they have to make. Veteran beguilers like Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Diaz, and more recent stars like Jennifer Lopez, Reese Witherspoon, Katherine Heigl, Kate Hudson, Amy Adams, Elizabeth Banks and Emma Stone all boast deft line-reading skills and high adorability quotients, yet most of their rom-coms stink. The only reason not to write a learned essay on the topic is that’s it’s too depressing. Grant the makers of _Sex Tape_ — Segel and cowriters Nicholas Stoller and Kate Angelo working with director Jake Kasdan — their worthy attempt to update the traditional romantic comedy while adhering to the genre’s verities. Annie and Jay, whose love has deteriorated into rote endearments pronounced on the fly between more pressing duties, seize a rare night alone together without their two kids to rekindle the spark by performing all possible positions illustrated in Alex Comfort’s 1972 manual _The Joy of Sex_. They work away at it for three hours — apparently Jay has impressive powers of recuperation — and have a great, refreshing time. Small oops: Jay accidentally uploaded their improvised exertions to the cloud, for easy viewing by the many friends, relatives and acquaintances to whom he’s given an iPad. **(FIND: Alex Comfort’s** **_The Joy of Sex_** **on** [**the all-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books list**](http://entertainment.time.com/2011/08/30/all-time-100-best-nonfiction-books/slide/the-joy-of-sex-by-dr-alex-comfort/ "undefined")**)** Ignore for the moment that [Apple says this simply can’t happen](http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/07/14/sex-tape-movie-could-never-actually-happen-apple-says/ "undefined"), and consider the change in popular mores since 1995, when Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee’s explicit tryst on a yacht stoked a sensation on something called VHS. (The very phrase “sex tape” is an endearing anachronism.) These days everybody’s doing it, recording it and uploading it. Nude selfies abound, and YouPorn is, according to one recent survey, the 83rd most popular website in the world, just slightly ahead of Time.com. For some people, like Paris Hilton, a sex tape is a career move; for others, like Anthony Weiner, a nude selfie is a career-ender. Annie, who is _this_ close to securing a big payoff for her blog from a children’s toy conglomerate, would be in the latter category. She and Jay must suppress their video triumph. Banks and Seth Rogen traveled a similar route as a nice couple who go down and dirty in Kevin Smith’s bumpily agreeable 2008 comedy _Zack and Miri Make a Porno_. There, both stars seemed willing, accomplished participants. In _Sex Tape_, Diaz fulfills her side of the bargain, miming radiance or desperation at the appropriate times, as if she were in a pretty good movie. Not so Segel, who in _Forgetting Sarah Marshall_ and _The Five-Year Engagement_ displayed the charm of an engaging galoot. This time he often speaks his lines — and remember, they’re lines he helped _write_ — with the disheartened, robotoid elocution of a prisoner in an al Qaeda video. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_Zach and Miri Make a Porno_**](http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,1840007%5F1840006%5F1839854,00.html "undefined")**)** He has our sympathy, since halfway into the film he’s being chased around a mansion by a ravenous German Shepherd. The swank digs belong to Hank Rosenbaum (Rob Lowe), CEO of the company that may buy Annie’s blog. At the office Hank is a dewy, bespectacled John Green type; at home he shows Annie his bizarre tattoos, the collection of paintings he’s commissioned — with himself as, for example, Rafiki in _The Lion King_ — and his stash of cocaine. While Annie is talking and toking, Jay is in a death match with that vicious canine. It’s a scene from a worse movie than _Sex Tape_ has been, but not as awful as _Sex Tape_ will become in its endless and implausible third act. Rob Corddry and the appealing Ellie Kemper (Erin Hannon on _The Office_) play the mandatory neighbor couple, and young Harrison Holzer nails the role of their snooty, scheming son. Lowe, who survived his own sex-tape scandal a generation ago and looks not a day older, lends a sweet derangement to the movie just as it’s going massively stupid: preposterous yet boring. _Sex Tape_ doesn’t fall off the cliff of competence so much as it executes a slow, agonized mudslide of failed intentions. Your watch tells you that the film lasts 95 minutes; your sinking spirit says it’s at least as long as Jay and Annie’s porn epic — without the redeeming prurient interest. It’s a sex comedy about love. And that’s the oddest element of this latest demonstration that the romantic comedy is a fatally endangered species. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2991743/sex-tape-movie-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2991743/sex-tape-movie-review/"},"headline":"REVIEW: Don't Dare Watch This Sex Tape","datePublished":"2014-07-16T15:24:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:10:23.535Z","description":"As a married couple trying to revive their love life, Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel prove that the homemade porn industry may be thriving, but the romantic comedy is nearly extinct","url":"https://time.com/2991743/sex-tape-movie-review/","keywords":["movies","Cameron Diaz"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c46795ccb274b6e/69869bee35ba6f1ef1c03090/df-00594_r.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6c46795ccb274b6e/69869bee35ba6f1ef1c03090/df-00594_r.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Cameron Diaz;Jason Segel","caption":"Cameron Diaz;Jason Segel","creditText":"Claire Folger—© 2013 CTMG, Inc.","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/movies/","name":"movies"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2991743/sex-tape-movie-review/","name":"REVIEW: Don't Dare Watch This Sex Tape"}}]}] ```