THE END OF SEX - Mark Reviews Movies

The End of Sex, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 27, 2023

The basic premise of The End of Sex is about as obvious and clichéd as they come. A married couple, who have a pretty good relationship in just about every other way, deal with the fact that their sex life is non-existent. It doesn't really matter that this essentially has been the setup for countless stories, told in a variety of ways and within likely every imaginable genre across every available medium, because we have to let this movie take its shot. It's a decent one at first.

A lot of that comes down to how likeable and generally believable these two characters are. Josh, played by screenwriter Jonas Chernick, and Emma, played by Emily Hampshire, are seemingly happy in their lives when we first meet them, readying their daughters (played by Emily Watt and Maya Misljevic) for a week-long trip to camp. This is the same camp, by the way, where the parents first met each other about three decades prior, when they were kids and became a cute little item at the place.

They haven't been a couple since then, but they have been for most of their lives at this point. Their relationship is a matter of pleasant, comfortable routine.

That's a nice start, especially compared to some of the alternatives this story gives us in the background—of one couple loudly insulting each other in a store, until Emma asks why this soon-to-be-separated pair is shopping together in the first place, or another that's in the midst of one spouse having an affair. Sex isn't part of the routine that has become their shared life together, and it might have stayed that way for a while, except that Emma suggests the two of them could have sex while the girls are away for a week.

That could be fun and different for them, which is a very telling notion, so Josh, also in a telling way, finds and dusts off a box of condoms. The scene that follows the decision, pausing occasionally so that on-screen text can inform us just how out-of-practice the two are and how unsatisfying—from chafing, to cramps, to a final bit of acting from both of them—the whole experience is, is funny because it's so frank in its specific details and general awkwardness.

As for the rest of director Sean Garrity's movie, it tries to continue that approach, and until Chernick takes the material in a slightly more serious direction, the humor here more or less works. Much of it is as predictable and clichéd as the premise, yes, but a good cast, such as the one that's assembled here, and a solid understanding of basic comedy can compensate for a lot. The movie's biggest problem, perhaps, is that it eventually forgets it's supposed to be a comedy.

The disaster of their first sexual encounter in a while gets Josh and Emma thinking about how they might bring the spark of passion back into their marriage. We know this is a comedy because the ideas and proposals rise to some extremes pretty early.

Instead of trying a different position or two, for example, Emma starts considering the notion of a threesome, bypassing her former art school classmate Marlon (Gray Powell), on whom she recently has developed a bit of an infatuation, for her co-worker/friend Wendy (Melanie Scrofano). That resulting scene has a few levels of surprise and discomfort happening, from how suddenly the friend's attitude changes to how Emma politely tries to include her husband in the fun she knows they'd both like to be having—but clearly aren't.

Instead of maybe sitting down to talk about what they actually want in bed (or elsewhere, which is another consideration), Emma and Josh, who gets some tips from his direct-in-an-HR-complaint-waiting-to-happen way co-worker Kelly (Lily Gao), decide to check out a swingers' club, where part of the joke is that they're far more desirable in their minds than anyone there finds them to be. Then, there's the way the scene builds, as new and familiar characters are introduced into the mix to make it even more uncomfortable. In a similar way, an experiment with recreational drugs escalates into some sudden consequences—both physical and in terms of being a bit too honest about what's going wrong with the marriage.

The actors know how to play this, especially Hampshire and Chernick, who bring just the right balance of the pathetic, the desperate, and the sympathetic to their roles when the movie is in comedy mode. Scrofano and Gao are quite funny, too, as characters that are obvious archetypes but don't necessarily feel that way, and Colin Mochrie gets a chance to show off his deadpan abilities in a scene that might otherwise collapse for just how predictable it is.

All of that general familiarity is one hurdle that The End of Sex nearly clears, thanks to the cast and the filmmakers' comedic chops. The bigger one, though, is the story's shift toward the severity of the potential for the actual collapse of this relationship. It might be honest, but that doesn't mean it works in this context, especially when the simplistic climax undermines whatever tonal shift the movie might have been attempting.

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