2014 Movie Preview: #26 - Sex Tape

Release date: July 25

Plot summary: The plot has a suburban married couple, Annie and Jay, accidentally losing a sex tape they made to reinvigorate their love life. Annie, a parenting blogger, leads the charge to recover it.

My take: Jason Segal teams up with his Bad Teacher co-star Cameron Diaz in an R-rated comedy that has a lot of potential. Segal does well with awkward comedy and had decent chemistry with Diaz. The added bonus for me with this film is that it is being direct by Jake Kasdan, who did Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which is one of the most underrated comedies to come out in the past 10 years. In an era where it seems like everyone is accidentally having "selfies" and personal tapes of themselves getting leaked to the public, this may be a very timely comedy.

RBR: 21 Jump Street

The last thing we needed was yet another movie made based off of a TV show, but at least 21 Jump Street has the courtesy of acknowledging this fact and having some fun with it. There is plenty to like here as Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum have fun playing cops who go undercover as high school students in order to bust a drug ring. A lot of that comes from them going against their original roles in high school (Tatum hangs with the nerds, while Hill buddies up with the cool kids). Even though the film yields some decent laughs, I also grew frustrated with the fact that the film felt that it was more clever than it really was. Several jokes are included that try to mock cop movie cliches, but most of them have either been done before or just didn't work in their execution. There's a running gag about expected explosions that never really pays off. I did appreciate the fact that they rounded out the cast with several funny people who helped give the film a bit more credibility. Nick Offerman, Rob Riggle, Ice Cube and Ellie Kemper all briefly show up and do their best to milk the most out of their screentime. I'm sure those in high school particularly found this film funny, but as I get further away from that period of my life, I find it more difficult to relate to what they appreciate. This is far from a perfect film, but I do give them an A for effort. Given the poor execution though, it's actual rating is much lower. Rating: *** 1/2