For a minute I was worried that The End of Sex (now streaming on Showtime) was a documentary about the debate between people lamenting that movies just don’t show as much nookie as they used to, and the SEX PRUDES who insist that every visible boob or butt cheek or pubic sprig is unnecessary, if not outright offensive. But I was happy to learn that the movie’s a Canadian sort-of-rom-but-definitely-com starring Emily Hampshire (of Schitt’s Creek fame) and Jonas Chernick (who also wrote the screenplay) as a middle-aged married-with-kids couple whose between-the-sheets life has skidded to an unceremonious halt. Is that hilarious, or just sad? And does it mean it’s all over for them? Let’s find out.
The Gist: Emma (Hampshire) and Josh (Chernick) have a nice house and good jobs and two cute-as-hell young daughters and they’re living their happily ever after, right? Of course not! They don’t quite realize it until the girls are off to winter art camp for a week, and just as the bus pulls away, Emma turns to Josh and says, “We could make some sex!” This is the ideal opportunity for them to rekindle their dormant insert-tab-A-into-slot-B life, so they hustle inside and fumble around and silly floating pop-up-video graphics ID their foibles, like TOO MUCH TEETH and FAKED IT, stuff like that. And then the movie’s title slams on the screen with a whump that not coincidentally sounds like a judge’s gavel.
The verdict: Needs work! This being a movie and not real life, Emma and Josh decide to get a little freaky, hoping it gooses the ol’ hormonal engines a little. Maybe a threesome? Maybe a membership to a sex club? Maybe some molly will get them in the lovin’ mood? At one point Emma says something about a “vat of butter” and, well, I ain’t gonna judge. You do you. Thankfully, they each have a slightly wacky work friend to talk to – Wendy (Melanie Scrofano) is Emma’s fellow art teacher, and Kelly (Lily Gao) is Josh’s confidant at the ad agency. There are outside temptations, too. Like Marlon (Gray Powell), an art gallery owner who likes the work of Emma’s student, but likes the cut of her jib even more, if you get my drift. And Kelly, well, she’s a young, liberal, smart woman who any hetero man would consider a catch. All of the aforementioned is a formula for wackiness, mishaps, misunderstandings – and marital discord. Will their marriage survive? NO SPOILERS, BRUH.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Just watched a hey-let’s-spice-things-up comedy called Happy Ending that finds a couple dabbling in a threesome. And it’s tonally similar to The Break-Up, the Vince Vaughn-Jennifer Aniston movie that doesn’t adhere to the expectations we have of comedies or dramas.
Performance Worth Watching: Hampshire deftly calculates a 51/49 comedy-to-drama ratio in a performance that brings to mind the mediumweight work of Jennifer Garner or Reese Witherspoon.
Memorable Dialogue: When the third party joins them in the bedroom and compliments how Emma smells, she suburban-moms the scene with a line that somehow doesn’t massacre the mood: “It’s my moisturizer. It’s from Costco!”
Sex and Skin: Some fairly frank semi-comical sex scenes in which we don’t see any naughty bits.
Our Take: Hampshire and Chernick kindle a highly relatable counter-chemistry that roots their characters’ marital struggles in truth, which keeps the hijinks from spinning into the idiotic dipshittery we see in too many comedies of this ilk. Sure, the threesome and sex-club scenes traffic in overly familiar farcical awkwardness, but beneath it is the sense that this couple is doing their damnedest to extract themselves from a rut that they surely worry will spawn even more unhappiness down the line. And the moments in which Emma and Josh argue and sputter and work their way through the complicated psychological curlicues of disconnection are by no means crowdpleasers, but they’re key to the film’s effectiveness, reflecting the exasperation and confusion couples feel when they really, truly love each other, but just can’t seem to communicate effectively.
This isn’t to say The End of Sex is wholly realistic; it’s still a movie after all, and it wants us to laugh at its sillier overtures. But I was far less annoyed by this movie than I should’ve been. It’s reassuring to see a semi-realistic on-screen couple work its way through dysfunction, and try to change things for the better. Wisely, it also doesn’t reach any definitive conclusions; it’s progressive in the sense that forgiveness trumps flirtations with infidelity, and it’s conservative in the sense that it suggests a couple can change things for the better without tearing everything down and starting over. In many ways it’s a lot like dozens of marital-mirth comedies that came before it, but It’s unassumingly above average as it indulges the genre’s broader tropes.
Our Call: The End of Sex is a touch smarter than it is amusing, which is ultimately to its benefit. It won’t change your life, but it’s worth a watch. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.