Mildly embarrassing misapp

Sex Tape (15)
Running time 94 minutes
Rating:**
If a film called Sex Tape had sprung from British origins, the chances are that it would either be an interesting yet quirky comedy by Pegg and Frost (just as an example you understand), or it would be a dark and gruesome horror about, say, a porn filmmaker retreating to the Outer Hebrides and being hunted by sadistic, religiously-motivated locals.
Sadly, Sex Tape is a film made in Hollywood, featuring a couple of medium to high-status stars who, although they like a bit of comedy, apparently don’t go in for either quirky or gruesome.
Instead, the audience is offered a mildly-amusing – there is one laugh-out-loud moment – featuring the ever-gorgeous Cameron Diaz and the straight-faced Jason Segel.
The film also makes a prominent feature – so to speak – of the rear ends of both Diaz and Segel, which at least caters for all sections of the movie-going community
Now that we have the end game out of the way, let’s move on to the story, which is about as light and frothy as it is possible to get without vanishing into thin air.
Annie (Diaz) and Jay (Segel) have been married for a decade, have two kids and the normal kind of life for people in such a situation, that is to say they have little or no time to call their own, only meet up with people whose conversation is focused solely on family matters, and need to diary their intimate moments together at least three weeks in advance – which rather takes the spontaneity out of the whole thing.
Having had a passionate courtship, they miss that aspect of their life and, one evening, while trying to re-ignite the flame – using roller skates and kitchen floors, I kid you not – they come up with the idea of making a video of themselves, re-enacting all the sexual variations depicted in their 1970s sex manual (I remain to be convinced that the majority of British couples have that kind of reading matter on their bookshelves).
Anyway, they do their thing and because Jay is an idiot, he forgets that he has a special app on his laptop which automatically copies things onto all the machines that he owns – including the ones he has previously given away as gifts.
Thus friends, inlaws, prospective bosses, everyone, has access, which of course is mildly embarrassing, especially given some of the aforementioned variations.
They then try and get all of machines back before the people realise they have blackmail gold in their hands.
There are dog-chasing scenes, injuries involving wardrobes, and a mystery postman, who featured in the trailer but failed to make it to the real film. Director Jake Kasdan keeps the swearwords in the script coming thick and fast and the action is along much the same lines.
There is a great deal of grimacing – well, there’s bound to be – some very lame scripting and, at the end, typically, Hollywood desperately tries to put a positive spin on the whole thing by saying it’s all been an uplifting experience.
However, wiser heads on old shoulders all know that the real Sex Tape message here is ‘don’t play around with computers unless you really know what you are doing’, and if you do something rude, you will more than likely get found out.
And then the trouble really starts.