Al's Omniflick: Sex Tape

Friday, July 18, 2014

Sex Tape

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Jake Kasdan/Starring: Jason Segel, Cameron Diaz, Rob Lowe, Rob Corddry, Ellie Kemper and Jack Black

The first question that popped into my head when seeing Jake Kasdan's Sex Tape was: could this movie be as criminally stupid as the annoying trailer? The answer to that burning question is an emphatic YES. I thought I'd already seen the year's most witless comedy in The Other Woman, which coincidentally also starred the gratingly unfunny and comedically inept (in my opinion) Cameron Diaz. At least she was tolerable in Kasdan's Bad Teacher, as was Jason Segel, whose charm and writing talent have started to erode since Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Diaz and Segel play Annie and Jay, suburban parents whose parental and career priorities have sapped their sex life of passion and frequency. The opening scenes of the film are a montage of Annie and Jay in college and their once-hot sex life that burned like a furnace. We're brought to the present shortly thereafter and their lives with two kids as they lament and ponder their marriage's carnal deficit.

Hoping to rekindle their passion, the couple decide to film themselves in a sex tape, which Jay absentmindely forgets to delete from his hard-drive. It doesn't help that Jay has given several people iPads with song lists inspired by his job as a DJ, which all have the transmitted tape on them. Mortified, Annie and Jay set out to steal back the iPads to prevent viral dissemination.

I didn't mind the narrative set-up; as unimaginative as it was, but everything that follows can't do for the film what the couple's tape does for their sex-life.

Realizing their best friends Robby and Tess (Rob Corddry and Ellie Kemper, respectively) might have the tape on the iPad presented them, Jay and Annie set out to retrieve it from the couple. After an unfunny situation at the door, where Annie and Jay try to determine whether the couple has actually seen the tape, they break down and explain their embarrassing predicament. Corddry and Kemper can do little more with the script and situation than Siegel and Diaz, which makes for a tedious, protracted scene.

While at Robby and Tess' house, Jay learns the couple's son Howard (Harrison Holzer) has discovered the tape, which he threatens to spread online if Jay doesn't cough-up $25,000; a sum beyond his reach. Jay tries to alert Robby to his son's extortionist plan, but finds his disclosure promptly dismissed. That Robby and Tess could parent a little creep like Howard I guess didn't strike the screenwriters as odd but whatever; it's silly to grouse about such things in a film like this.

Jay and Annie also realize the CEO of the company that wants to buy her mostly wholesome, women-friendly blog on motherhood, has one of the iPads; which has the potential to jeopardize her deal. Rob Lowe plays said CEO Hank, who is a little bewildered when the couple show up at his door, pretending to collect for a charity for children with enlarged kidneys--another uninspired bit that thuds all around. Annie uses Jay's fictive diarrhea (which annoys him--and maybe us) as a pretext for him to conduct an iPad search of the premises. As Jay searches frantically, a vicious german shepherd tries repeatedly to maul him in scenes that reek of tiredness, including one where he lures the dog onto a rapidly-moving treadmill, which sends it crashing into a wall. Meanwhile Hank plies Annie with cocaine, hoping to cozy up to her. Soon, Robby and Tess arrive and what should be opportunities for hysterical farce just play without any wit or fun.

Later, a brief appearance by Jack Black as the man behind YouPorn offers the film some comedic spark, but only briefly.

What lesson Jay and Annie glean from their struggle is that though passion cools, what succeeds it is the love and companionship of family--a frightfully shopworn message (even if it may be true) Hollywood has peddled for years and serves as its fall-back moral. And what about a film that promises naughty fun but only teases with its PG-13 chasteness? Well, you get something like Sex Tape, with its high-concept, insistently bland story and comedically tone-deaf dialogue; a movie the creators probably imagined couldn't lose in the telling. How wrong they were.

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On DVD

Fury (1936)

Director: Fritz Lang

Though we might normally think of the films M and Metropolis when director Fritz Lang becomes the topic of conversation, less known is the legendary director's work in Hollywood. Having fled the ever-growing menace of Nazi Germany for America in the early 1930s', Lang eventually found himself under contract for MGM.

Though his work in Hollywood is very uneven, one standout is Fury, from 1936. Starring Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney, the film's condemnation of mob justice seems spectacularly daring now, considering lynching was still a reality in Depression-era America. We don't see one black person in the film entire but we know precisely for whom Lang film is sympathetic.

Spencer Tracy plays Joe Wilson, who is arrested in a small town while en route to meet his fiance, Katherine (Sylvia Sydney). Suspected of being part of a kidnapping of a little girl, Wilson is arrested on the flimsiest evidence. While he sits in cell; angry and indignant, Katherine is puzzled as to why her fiance hasn't arrived at their prearranged meeting place.

But Wilson's fortunes take a darker and more dangerous turn when a mob--already on edge--is roused to anger. Egging one another on, the mob moves on the jailhouse where Wilson is being held. As the angry gathering becomes a mass, drawing citizens of the town into their swelling numbers, a lynch-mob begins to form. The sheriff, determined to see due process take its course, refuses their forceful demands. Becoming angrier and angrier and bolder and bolder, the crowd storms the jail, overwhelming the sheriff and his deputies. Unable to unlock the cell doors to reach Wilson, the mob sets the jailhouse ablaze as an alternate method of lynching.

Katherine, having arrived on the scene, faints when she sees flames engulf the cell where her fiance is held.

In spite of the mob acting as a faceless entity, its principle members are brought to trial though the town and the defendants maintain a conspiracy of silence, hoping to escape convictions and censure.

A sure acquittal seems imminent until damning evidence assures their guilt. When the majority of the members receive death sentences, Wilson turns up at his brothers, having survived the fire. Knowing the public is unaware of his survival, he vows to stay in hiding to ensure the mob conspirators are executed.

The scene where Katherine, nearly insane from grief, comes face to face with Joe is a powerful moment in the film. As she slowly recovers from her state, she realizes Joe's vindictive determination to see the mob hang is in itself a great injustice.

The story climaxes during a stirring courtroom scene that brings the fascinating story to a close.

I would have never expected Hollywood to make a statement as powerful as Fury made in 1936. Given the fact that lynchings in America at the time went unpunished, the movie railed bravely, in spite of the main character being white rather than black, against what was then the status quo. The Oxbow Incident would make a similar and commensurately powerful statement seven years later.

The film's willingness to peer into the darker side of American life could be partly attributed to Lang, who co-wrote the story and who was no stranger to exploring the darker side of humanity. Having seen evil flower in his home country, it makes sense Lang would choose to tell this story.

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sydney give wonderful, emotionally layered performances. Katherine's near descent into madness is depicted touchingly by Sydney. To see Tracy's mild-mannered Wilson become angry and vengeful is heartbreaking.

Even watching Lang's film on a small screen does little to diminish its power. Weeks after the viewing, I still can't shake its indelible images or its angry indictment of one of America's great crimes. One couldn't devise a better title than one it was given eighty years ago. Fury indeed.