Movie a Day Blog was surprised by the number of movies that have SEX TAPE in their title; I gave up counting after 35.

    This may be one reason SEX TAPE (2014) opened so weakly at the boxoffice last weekend; we’re all a little jaded about sex tapes. Now it’s called internet porn.

    There may be another reason the new film didn’t succeed: it’s not very funny. That’s being a little unfair, because Jason Segel (who co-wrote the film) and Cameron Diaz are talented comedic actors, and the movie is intermittently amusing, especially when it’s not trying so hard.

    Unfortunately, grim determination seems the tone set by most of the film, a frantic story done at a frantic pace that proves as exhausting as it is entertaining.

    SEX TAPE also has the weirdest digital effect I have yet witnessed in a non-special effects film. To show their first meeting and endless lovemaking sessions nine years earlier,  the faces of Diaz and Segel have been unmistakably digitally altered. Their features are smoothed, baby-fied, their wrinkles and eye pouches eliminated -- they’re like robot versions of the actors, and it thoroughly creeped me out.

    Thank God they both look their age for the majority of the film, although Diaz is getting a bit long in the tooth to be playing a character who should be in her early 30s, and looks more like Segel’s older sister.

    The plot is stupid in a completely contemporary way: to liven up their family-obliterated sex life, Segel records his and Diaz’ marathon, three-hour porn session keyed to the illustrations in “The Joy of Sex,” weirdly filmed with both of them in underwear, while the illustrations in the book are fully nude.

    Through ridiculously complex plot manipulations, Segel somehow manages to distribute the full iSex session to a series of iPads and then has to try and get them back. It’s a waste of time, since the “old folks can’t handle technology” story line is starting to go after younger and  younger victims. Pretty soon you’ll be 15 and considered out of it.

    Jake Kasdan, son of the great screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan and the good character actress Meg Kasdan, is a talented young filmmaker. I liked what he did with BAD TEACHER (2011) and he created the funny TV series starring Zooey Deschanel, “New Girl.”

    But he’s more miss than hit in SEX TAPE, and it’s not surprising. When everyone has made, seen or deleted various sex tapes over the past decade or so, it really doesn’t have much allure left. I predict there will not be a SEX TAPE 2.