Playing phone sex for laughs

A comedy with an indie spirit -- and dirty talk..

Just about anything can be a source for comedy -- and that includes phone sex, the central gimmick in For a Good Time, Call ..., a movie that tries to celebrate female friendship while taking a giggly approach to its risqué hook.

Here's the gist: Economic necessity forces two antagonistic young women (Lauren Anne Miller and Ari Graynor) to share the same digs, a spacious but pricey Gramercy Park apartment that Graynor's character took over after her grandmother died.

We quickly learn that Graynor's Katie supports herself with multiple jobs: She's both manicurist and phone sex worker.

After losing her publishing job, Miller's character -- named Lauren -- decides to help Katie make the move from employee of a phone-sex service to owner of her own operation. The two become partners in a story that begins to look like an advertisement for starting a small business -- with dirty talk added for ribald measure.

If you're looking for a movie that in any way explores the moral and psychological impact of being a phone sex worker, you'll have to look elsewhere. Working from a script by Miller and Katie Anne Naylon, director Jamie Travis has nothing much in mind other than turning out a gloss of a comedy that offers the female equivalent of a "bromance." Does it become a "she-mance" when women are involved?

I won't include spoilers, but know that the script revolves around a few twists that are ridiculously improbable and that it also provides the two women with a gay male friend, an obligatory presence in this kind of comedy. As the gay pal responsible for bringing the two women together, Justin Long battles cliche -- and I'm afraid loses.

Few expect realism in a giddy comedy, but the idea that Katie would meet with one of her regular callers (Mark Webber) makes too big a mockery of verisimilitude. And the movie's suggestion that there might be something more than friendship bubbling beneath the surface of Lauren and Katie's relationship seems ill-defined and confusing.

In this odd couple pairing, Miller portrays the organized woman; and Graynor -- who makes the bigger impression -- portrays the free spirit. The actresses work well enough together and whip up a few chuckles, but despite its phone-sex focus, For a Good Time, Call can't let go of convention: Girl meets girl. Girl and girl have a Big Fight. Girl and girl reunite as best buds.

Cameo appearances by Seth Rogen and Kevin Smith (as masturbating callers) do little aside from helping to establish the movie's comic and indie credentials -- and up the gross-out ante.