October 22, 2014 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 21 ‘Sex Tape’ languishes due to one-joke premise by Dennis Seuling “Sex Tape” (Sony) is about married couple Jay (Jason Segel) and Annie (Cam- eron Diaz), who have let life, jobs, and kids rob them of opportunities for intimacy. To spice things up, Annie suggests making a sex video. Jay neglects to erase the video and it gets uploaded to several iPads sent to assorted individuals. 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, Hank (Rob Lowe). Diaz and Segel do their best to milk laughs from a mostly mirthless script to little effect. The one-joke premise that the video will be discovered by friends, employer, neighbors, and casual acquain- tances 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. The movie goes wrong in its too-numer- ous story lines — a foray onto the site of a porn server, a subplot about blackmail, a slapstick chase by an angry German shep- herd, and a cocaine-stoked evening at the fancy home of Hank, whose company hopes to sponsor Annie’s family-friendly blog. It is tough for actors to get much mile- age from setups that are not funny or clever. The writers pepper the film with lots of R- rated language, but none of it makes view- Jason Segel and Cameron Diaz in a scene from the comedy ‘Sex Tape.’ ers laugh and it all seems desperate. Bonus features on the Blu-ray edition include a digital copy, bloopers, deleted and extended scenes, a comic tour of Hank’s art collec- tion, and alternate takes for some of the film’s gags. “Life after Beth” (Lionsgate) combines romance with a popular staple of current horror cinema: the zombie. Zach (Dane DeHaan) is devastated when his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza) dies unexpectedly from a snake bite while hiking. Beth sud- denly and mysteriously returns to life, along with several other residents of the local cemetery, including his grandfather and the previous occupants of the house in which he and his family live. Zach does not know quite how to react to Beth. Her parents (Molly Shannon, John C. Riley) advise him not to think about it too much and to embrace the return of the girl he loves. However, when Beth starts devel- oping some bizarre tendencies, including a disturbing taste for human flesh, Zach has to confront the facts. Can love survive among the living dead? Combining comedy and horror is a tricky business, since there is a risk of alienating both comedy fans and horror aficionados. De Haan’s Zach is appropriately anguished, Plaza’s Beth is a creepily endearing zombie, and director Jeff Baena incorporates some funny bits. Overall, however, “Life after Beth” never lives up to the potential of its premise. Bonuses on the Blu-ray edition include audio commentary with writer/ director Baena, deleted scenes, digital copy, and a behind-the-scenes featurette. “Silent Witness: Season One” and “Silent Witness: Season 17” (BBC) are DVD sets that bookend the long-running British series that takes viewers from crime scenes to the laboratories where forensic evidence reveals clues to those crimes. The series, which debuted in 1996, was created by Nigel McCrery, a former murder squad detective, who based it on Professor Helen Whitwell, a forensic pathologist McCrery knew while serving as a police officer. The show centers on a dedicated and driven team of forensic pathologists who (continued on Crossword page)