Review: Sex Tape

by Trevor Kirkendall

★

“Sex Tape.” You can probably already gather what this film will entail just based on the name. Perhaps I have a minor spoiler or two toward the end of this review. But let’s be honest: you already know how this film begins and ends and everything else in between just from watching the trailer. But my star rating says it all: “Sex Tape” is just bad.

The movie stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as Annie and Jay, a couple of married sex addicts who aren’t too pleased with the way their life has gone since they aren’t able to engage in sexual congress as much as they would like. Their married lives have gotten in the way of their ability to fornicate whenever the mood strikes them. They both have jobs. Annie writes for a mommy-centric blog that’s about to be bought out by some kind of family company. It’s never fully explained what the company does. All we know is Rob Lowe runs the company. Jay works for a radio station I suppose (again, it’s never really fully explained). He gets a ton of free iPads and gives all his old ones out to friends, family, and the mailman with musical playlists he’s super proud about.

Annie bemoans on her blog about losing the spark of sex and wonders how to get it back. Well, it’s not a spark that’s been lost. It’s called being married with children and being busy. So right off the bat, they lost me. Are we to understand that this good-looking couple with careers and kids aren’t happy because they can’t find the time to fit in a little intercourse? The marriage doesn’t appear to be falling apart, they just want to have some fun like the used to before kids came along. Right up front, act one fails to convincingly draw the audience into their personal issues.

After Annie thinks she sold her blog to Rob Lowe’s company, she and Jay decide to celebrate. They drop the kids off with Annie’s mom (Nancy Lenehan) and get ready for a night of sexual adventures. Unfortunately, they’re out of practice so things don’t really go too well for them. They start drinking and decide they should tape themselves with the iPad. After three drunken hours of wild fun, Annie asks Jay to erase the video from the iPad. Jay doesn’t, and the video ends up getting synched up with all the other iPads he handed out to friends, family, and the mailman. A text from an unknown number congratulating them on the video has them very concerned about who else has the video. They set out on a nightlong adventure to retrieve the iPad’s from their friends before more people see it. They enlist the help of their friends Robby and Tess (Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper) to help them out, even though they really enjoyed the video.

A premise this simple and asinine makes for a very predictable film. I could tell you how it turns out, but you already know. And how is this film not funnier? You would think a movie starring Jason Segel about a missing sex tape filled with sex jokes would be funny. It’s not. The screenplay from Kate Angelo, Segel, and Nicholas Stoller is filled with every cliché in the screenwriting book (or perhaps, the how-not-to-write-a-screenplay book).

This seems to be a bit of a one-off for director Jake Kasdan. His work on previous films suck as “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” and “Bad Teacher” has not been exceptional, but merely acceptable. He completely misfires with “Sex Tape.” There’s an overall theme that his film tries to portray, but it’s never really tied together with the rest of the plotline. There’s that ‘ah-ha’ moment up toward the end with some nice dialogue that talks about what we all learned, but it doesn’t tie in with the set up we were given at the beginning.

The whole idea is that this couple needs to complete their adventure before being sexually attracted to one another again. But I never bought that idea. They are in love. They are attracted to each other. They just get wrapped up in this little thing known as life. Things that were once important to you aren’t as important as you grow older. So the film should be about growing up. Instead it’s about trying to find a certain spark again, which I don’t believe these characters ever lost.

Maybe you’re sitting there thinking I’m being too critical about a movie called “Sex Tape,” but I don’t think I’m out of line. Too often we find movies today that aren’t well developed. They’re rushed through story departments just because they have a high concept and an A-list star attached. And when you rush a script through like that, you end up missing some of the basic pillars of story structure. And apparently you lose out on good jokes too. How is this movie not funnier? Better jokes would have made this film at least a little tolerable. But at only 94 minutes in length, the pain and misery doesn’t last long.

Review: Neighbors

by Trevor Kirkendall

★★

Unlike my movie-reviewing counterpart Joe Moss, I was not involved in any type of fraternity during my college years. Sure, I attended an event or two but I wasn’t a member of that particular scene. I know nothing about the inner-workings of a fraternity, but I do know enough people who were members to know their lifestyle is being exaggerated for the sake of some cheap laughs in Nicholas Stoller’s new film “Neighbors.”

Seth Rogen is about as reliable as the come in Hollywood these days. You always know what you’re getting with him and “Neighbors” is nothing different. He’s good at what he does, but he never seems to branch out to anything else. He played himself in last summer’s hilarious movie “This Is the End.” He plays Mac Radner in “Neighbors” but I can’t tell the difference. I do still like him though and would consider myself a fan of his.

In “Neighbors,” Mac and his wife Kelly (Rose Byrne) have just moved into a beautiful new house in what appears to be a quiet neighborhood. They are brand new parents to the very adorable Stella. Mac and Kelly were hard partiers in their day and are looking to settle down and be good parents. But Mac can’t resist a good joint at work with his pal Jimmy (Ike Barinholtz) and Kelly desperately wants to hang out at raves with her friend – and Jimmy’s ex-wife – Paula (Carla Gallo).

Without any warning, the Delta Psi fraternity moves into the house next door. Immediately fearing that the neighborhood is about to become quite a bit louder, Mac and Kelly decided to head over to the house and come off as the hip and cool neighbors. They think that if they come across as “dope,” they’ll be able to convince their partying neighbors to keep it down. They immediately make friends with the fraternity’s president Teddy Sanders (Zac Efron) and vice president Pete Regazolli (Dave Franco).

Things start off pretty well with Mac and Kelly partying with the college kids all night long (great parents, right?). Teddy tells Mac if he has any problems with the noise to let him know personally and he’ll take care of it. He makes Mac promise him that he won’t call the cops if there’s an issue. But Mac calls the cops the next night anyway. This is a declaration of war in Teddy’s eyes. He’s planning to make Mac and Kelly’s life a living hell. But Mac and Kelly are also out to see the Delta Psi house get shut down as well.

The setting of Nicholas Stoller’s new film is something that resonates well enough with any current or former college kid (member of the Greek society or not) to be a modestly entertaining movie, but its own plot gets in the way of being as hilarious as it could have been. With every new Seth Rogen movie, I always go back to one of his first films, “Knocked Up.” That film came out at a time when audiences were still being introduced to Rogen, and his trademark antics were not as well known. Take the opening scene in “This is the End” when the random fan asks him to do the “Seth Rogen laugh.” Everyone knows that now.

But not only did that movie introduce the masses to Rogen, “Knocked Up” was also one of the best

comedy films made during the last decade. Judd Apatow proved to moviegoers that just because it’s an R-rated comedy film filled with hundreds of expletives and raunchy sex jokes, the movie could still have an enormous heart. Occasionally, you’ll get another movie that comes close to that (“Superbad,” “This Is the End”). So is it wrong of me to expect a raunchy sex comedy to actually be a good movie in addition to be entertaining, especially when Rogen seems to be in many of the good ones?

The problem with “Neighbors” is that it gets so lost in its own plot it almost forgets to push its theme across. My three-paragraph description of the plot above takes up about 25 or 30 minutes of screen time, which is also known as the first act. There’s still two acts and over an hour of movie left to go. At only 97 minutes, you’d think the film was already short enough, but it feels like it runs long.

The movie is filled with Rogen going after Efron, and then Efron going after Rogen, and back and forth. It’s a classic example of a comedic revenge story. One comment I saw online said that “Neighbors” was Dennis and Mr. Wilson all grown up. I couldn’t agree more. And what’s worse, the things these guys do to each other just aren’t funny. Are there moments of humor? Sure there are. Are they moments that leave you gasping for air because you’re laughing so hard? Only one. Just one.

“Neighbors” is filled with one college cliché after another. “Animal House” is still the definitive college film after all these years, and any other movie produced within that genre is an attempt to outdo it. “Neighbors” is a failed attempt. Each scene portrays the stereotype that fraternities nothing but sex crazed, drug addicted, alcoholic party animals. And while that might be the case for some people, those labels aren’t exclusive to fraternity brothers. The film probably could have still portrayed its messages – as vague as they are – without these over exaggerated and overused cliché.

And while “Neighbors” features Rogen doing what Rogen does, the real star of the film is Efron. Admittedly, I have seen very little of Efron’s work up until this point. I am aware of his Disney Channel beginnings and his desire to shed that image. It’s pretty hard to get rid of that image outside of leaking risqué pictures of one’s self to the Internet. Efron has done a lot of independent work to try and show a more grown up side, but this might be his first mainstream adult role.

And he turns out to be the movie’s best moment.  His character has a surprising amount of depth built into it. Efron portrays this role with great ease. This role and movie might very well have spoken to him more than anyone else. He’s a former teen heartthrob trying to move on to the next stage of his life and career, while also working on his own sobriety. This part works for him, and he plays it exceptionally well.

But that’s not enough to save “Neighbors.” It has its moments that make you laugh but its ultimately unsatisfying. I think that if Rogen wants to continue what’s been a very successful career, he should be branching out more to some different kind of comedies that are little further developed. Films littered with clichés will not be very memorable. Which is why this one will quickly fall away from people’s minds and “Animal House” still remains the must see college comedy.