Sex Tape, film review: Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel star in timely movie about porn leak

Film is wittier and less smutty than its reputation might suggest

Jason Segal and Cameron Diaz star in Sex Tape (Claire Folger/CTMG)

Jake Kasdan’s latest feature is is a curiosity: a cheery screwball farce (with the emphasis on the screwing) about an all-American couple (Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel) that takes an utterly matter of fact approach to sex.

In contemporary middle-class America, if this film is the measure, everyone from Mumsnet-style moms to spotty teenagers is watching porn online.

Bizarrely, one of the most sympathetic characters is the internet magnate and owner of YouPorn (a typically energetic cameo from Jack Black) who offers relationship advice to Annie (Diaz) and Jay (Segel.)

Read more: Even the most loving couples get into erotic ruts

College sweethearts who used to make love all the time, they are discovering that marriage and kids has had a depressing effect on their libidos.

In a bid to recapture the erotic zest of their early courtship, they shoot a three hour iPad video of themselves enacting every position from The Joy of Sex.

Inevitably, this falls into the wrong hands.

Panned in America, where it performed poorly at the box office, Sex Tape is wittier and less smutty than its reputation might suggest. (The sex is so foregrounded that the film doesn’t seem especially prurient.)

The most disconcerting aspect of the film - apart from the bizarre slapstick interlude in which Jay is savaged by a guard dog upstairs as Annie is taking cocaine with a media magnate (Lowe) downstairs - is the unwieldy way it combines ideas from both adult movies and Disney-style family comedy.

Jake Kasdan, 94 mins, starring: Cameron Diaz, Jason Segel, Rob Lowe