Lust and laughter run thin in “The End of Sex,” a weirdly traditional comedy in which a bored married couple attempt to revitalize their sex life.
Directed by Sean Garrity, the film looks at a common dilemma — how to keep things spicy in the bedroom when years of cozy domesticity have killed the mood?
It’s hard to switch gears and throw yourself into passionate lovemaking, Garrity posits, when you’re in pajamas cleaning up your children’s scattered toys. True, but in “The End of Sex,” parenthood appears to turn adults into babbling adolescents who blush and freeze up in the face of sexual opportunity. This dynamic is supposed to be cringe-funny, but over the course of an hour and a half, this staid farce proves otherwise.
Emma (Emily Hampshire) and Josh (Jonas Chernick), two painfully square 40-somethings, are granted a weeklong reprieve from their child-rearing duties when their daughters head to sleepaway camp. Emma, in particular, is desperate to rekindle the flame; she is in love with her husband, but sleeping with Marlon (Gray Powell), an old art-school buddy not known for his subtlety, proves increasingly tempting.
“My Awkward Sexual Adventure,” the title of an earlier film by Garrity, describes the events of this one, too: Emma and Josh attempt to have a threesome with Emma’s colleague Wendy (Melanie Scrofano), join a swinger’s club where geriatric men stroll around in bondage gear and animal masks, and take party drugs to fuel their libidos. All fail, of course, because Emma and Josh are astoundingly immature, a quality accentuated by the film’s bubbly, motor-mouthed comedy style.
Lily Gao, who plays Kelly, Josh’s younger, more sexually experienced co-worker — as well as his confidante — deals with sexual hangups of her own that prove more captivating than that of her married counterparts. This speaks to what makes the central conflict feel so vapid and vanilla, as if the challenges of monogamy had only to do with the unavoidable friction between love and good sex.
The End of Sex
Rated R for clothed sex scenes and party drugs. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters.
