Typically, the order used to go like this: A celebrity sex tape leaks; said celebrity gets momentarily embarrassed; and their career ultimately emerges no worse for wear. (And, if we’re being honest, said careers actually improved.) But back in 2014, the celebrity-starring Sex Tape movie was released (intentionally), the leads Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel promoted it more-or-less proudly, and then both of them then more or less disappeared from their mainstream broad-comedy movie careers. Segel got some acclaim for The End of the Tour the following year, though it was shot before Sex Tape came out, and then took a two-year break before gradually re-emerging in a series of lower-profile indies. He hasn’t made another big studio comedy since. Diaz, though, really disappeared. After releasing three movies in 2014 – of which Sex Tape was the second, and seemingly most in her wheelhouse – she retired.
Well, hardly any actors actually retire in the 21st century – not permanently. In fact, Diaz has a movie out this week on Netflix: Back in Action, in which she co-stars with Jamie Foxx, after the two appeared together in Annie, another of those cursed 2014 films. But she was more steadfast about her retirement than almost anyone else of her fame level. Back in Action arrives over ten years since Diaz last appeared in a new movie, and she didn’t pivot to a streaming TV series, either. Foxx also took a break after Annie and a busy 2014; even with the COVID shutdown and a major health issue, he’s appeared in 10 movies since. Before this week, Daniel Day-Lewis had graced movie screens more recently than Cameron Diaz. The last time a new Diaz movie showed at the multiplex, Barack Obama was president. Trump hadn’t even announced his 2016 run yet. During her last movie year, two non-sequels topped the yearly box office.
It wasn’t a bad time for Diaz, either. Her other two movies from her 2014 exit trilogy both made more money than Sex Tape: The Other Woman was a surprise hit in which Diaz, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upon all realize they’re being manipulated by the same guy, and turn the tables; that Annie remake was something of a holiday disappointment, but plenty of people saw it, and Diaz had a fun, scene-stealing villain role. Sex Tape’s relative failure stung mostly because it felt like a sure thing: an Apatow-era summer-release raunch-com with two big stars, with successful collaborators in tow. Segel did work on the screenplay with his frequent creative partner Nicholas Stoller, while the director was Jake Kasdan, reuniting with Diaz and Segel after Bad Teacher, one of her biggest hits. The movie’s domestic grosses were significantly lower than the same year’s Dracula Untold and Dolphin Tale 2. Then again, had it grossed the same amount in 2024, it would have been the biggest straight-up comedy of the year. Perhaps more to the point, Segel later noted that the movie did OK financially (it was a decent global performer; nudity travels!) but “didn’t feel good” (a damning description about a movie where two people are desperate to have sex).
Of course, direct comedy sequels and unofficial companion pieces alike have failed to connect many times without sending its stars into hiding. So what exactly was so embarrassing about Sex Tape that it couldn’t function as a de facto sequel to Bad Teacher?
The simple answer is, well, nothing. It’s not especially embarrassing. The movie, which is currently streaming on Netflix, is a half-amusing trifle that, like a lot of movies from towards the end of Apatow’s Hollywood dominance, feels underdeveloped and slapped-together, even though Segel and Diaz should have, from their past experiences, better recognized a comedy script that wasn’t quite ready. The premise that Diaz and Segel’s characters make a (digital) sex tape to spice up their sex lives, depleted by work and family obligations, doesn’t focus unduly on bitterness or recriminations. The two stars seem to genuinely like each other, even when Segel becomes increasingly put-upon, perhaps reflecting his weariness with the movie itself. Even the film’s nudity has a cute rom-com mismatchiness: There’s Segel, whose first big writing/starring vehicle had him doing full-frontal, paired with Diaz, whose demure butt-only nude scenes here were her first ever. It’s refreshing to watch a comedy that wants to be both funny and sexy, instead of treating sex as an icky prank.
At the same time, no, Sex Tape isn’t a lost classic, and it does have a certain tiredness that makes it feel retirement-compatible. Some of its details feel time-capsule-ready, in the way that any movie addressing contemporary, current domestic life inevitably will a decade later; part of the story involves Diaz’s character potentially selling her hit mommy blog (?!) for a lot of money (?!!?), and Segel’s character is known for uploading awesome playlists; his habit of syncing new music across a network of iPads he uses for work and then gives away is what causes the sex tape to escape in the first place. To be fair, other aspects of it are, would prove, if not exactly prescient, relevant beyond 2014: Annie and Jay get in trouble because their sex tape goes in a digital storage cloud, and in the past ten years it’s become clear that anyone who keeps private material, especially visual material, especially in the celebrity realm, on the cloud leaves themselves vulnerable to vicious, abusive invasions of privacy (even if this one is more of a self-own than an act of malice).
But mostly (and especially after the passage of ten years) it feels like the movie is trying to keep a positive attitude about the fact that its stars are no longer in the blush of youth, and have to now figure out ways of making comedies about marriage and parenthood. Some of this is just dumb Hollywood math; Segel was only 34 and Diaz was only 42, and certainly they both had (and continue to have) other options, though it’s notable that Diaz’s new movie casts her as, yep, a long-dormant spy turned loving wife and mother, sort of a jarring role for an actress who never really dug into those wife-and-mom types of parts before, favoring her spiky independent streak. (In family-movie terms, she’s more of the wayward-sister type.) But beyond prodding its stars into typical Hollywood boxes, Sex Tape itself radiates a kind of I guess-this-is-it vibe, a shruggy surrender to sitcom-land. The movie runs just past the 90-minute mark before the credits roll, and it often feels like a supersized TV episode. The sequence leading up to Diaz and Segel actually making the sex tape is shockingly drawn-out, and while it’s sort of nice to see a movie willing to spend that much time with its characters just hanging out and trying to have sex, it makes the whole thing more belabored than truly urgent.
Really, though, it may have been Diaz’s relationship with Hollywood that was hitting some mid-life doldrums; Sex Tape came out almost exactly at the 20-year anniversary of The Mask, her feature debut, and most of her missteps involved the stuff that a beautiful, charismatic actress “should” do: The Holiday, Knight and Day, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Sex Tape feels like an outgrowth of that career, not the one that featured Being John Malkovich, Vanilla Sky, The Box, and Bad Teacher. Though she’s capable of sunny sweetness, the best Diaz roles have a touch of danger, and nudity aside, Sex Tape kept that danger offscreen, somewhere up in the cloud.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
The post Cameron Diaz Finally Comes Out Of Retirement, 10 Years After ‘Sex Tape’ Sent Her Packing appeared first on Decider.
