‘The End of Sex’ Review: When Domesticity Kills the Mood

Lust and laughter run skinny in “The End of Sex,” a weirdly conventional comedy wherein a bored married couple try and revitalize their intercourse life.

Directed by Sean Garrity, the movie seems to be at a typical dilemma — how you can hold issues spicy within the bed room when years of cozy domesticity have killed the temper?

It’s laborious to change gears and throw your self into passionate lovemaking, Garrity posits, if you’re in pajamas cleansing up your youngsters’s scattered toys. True, however in “The End of Sex,” parenthood seems to show adults into babbling adolescents who blush and freeze up within the face of sexual alternative. This dynamic is meant to be cringe-funny, however over the course of an hour and a half, this staid farce proves in any other case.

Emma (Emily Hampshire) and Josh (Jonas Chernick), two painfully sq. 40-somethings, are granted a weeklong reprieve from their child-rearing duties when their daughters head to sleepaway camp. Emma, particularly, is determined to rekindle the flame; she is in love together with her husband, however sleeping with Marlon (Gray Powell), an outdated art-school buddy not recognized for his subtlety, proves more and more tempting.

“My Awkward Sexual Adventure,” the title of an earlier movie by Garrity, describes the occasions of this one, too: Emma and Josh try and have a threesome with Emma’s colleague Wendy (Melanie Scrofano), be part of a swinger’s membership the place geriatric males stroll round in bondage gear and animal masks, and take occasion medication to gasoline their libidos. All fail, in fact, as a result of Emma and Josh are astoundingly immature, a top quality accentuated by the movie’s bubbly, motor-mouthed comedy model.

Lily Gao, who performs Kelly, Josh’s youthful, extra sexually skilled co-worker — in addition to his confidante — offers with sexual hangups of her personal that show extra fascinating than that of her married counterparts. This speaks to what makes the central battle really feel so vapid and vanilla, as if the challenges of monogamy had solely to do with the unavoidable friction between love and good intercourse.

The End of Sex
Rated R for clothed intercourse scenes and occasion medication. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters.