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Page 22 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • July 30, 2014 ‘Sex Tape’ suffers from one-joke premise, falls flat was to throw in as much mayhem as possible and hope some of the gags would land. Instead, the movie becomes an exercise in tedium. Comedy succeeds on the basis of talent, timing, and material. It is tough for actors to get much mileage from setups that are not funny or clever. Timing can be helped greatly by editing, yet the dead space director Jake Kasdan leaves after lines or bits that are supposed to elicit laughs only lead to awkward emptiness. The writers peppered the film with lots of R-rated language, but it seems desperate and none of it makes the audience laugh. An opening-day audience was eerily quiet, the death knell for comedy. The material just was not connecting. Rated R for nudity, sexual situations, language, and stylized violence, “Sex Tape” is the second major studio comedy film this summer (along with Melissa McCarthy’s “Tammy”) with a high-concept idea that ultimately fails. Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz star as a couple attempting to spice up their relationship in ‘Sex Tape.’ by Dennis Seuling In “Sex Tape,” Jay (Jason Segel) and Annie (Cameron Diaz) are a married couple who have let life, jobs, and kids rob them of opportunities for intimacy. To spice things up, Annie suggests making a sex video. They shuffle the kids off to Grandma’s for an overnight and go about their plan. The primary conflict ensues when Jay neglects to erase the video and it gets uploaded to several iPads by means of a new app. Their panicky efforts to retrieve the iPads take them to next door neighbors Robby (Rob Corddry) and Tess (Ellie Kemper), and to Annie’s prospective new boss (Rob Lowe). The one-joke premise that the video will be discovered by friends, employer, neighbors, and casual acquaintances and paint them as sexual perverts, ruining their lives and embarrassing their kids, offers surprisingly little to laugh at in this often raunchy R-rated comedy. Though both Diaz and Segel do their best to milk laughs from a mostly mirthless script, they cannot enliven the story. The script by Kate Angelo, Nicholas Stoller, and Segel, takes pains to illustrate the early years of Annie and Jay’s marriage, when their hormones were working at warp speed and it did not take much to get them into bed. Their problems are easily recognizable by couples with children. Parents lack privacy and prioritize their offspring’s needs over personal fulfillment. The movie goes wrong in its tendril-like story lines, including a foray onto the site of a porn site server; a subplot about blackmail; a cocaine-stoked evening at the fancy home of Hank (Lowe), the guy whose company hopes to sponsor Annie’s family-friendly blog; and a slap- stick chase by an angry German shepherd. Maybe the plan