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.

'The Sitter' is R-rated rot

If you keep up with celebrity news, you know that Jonah Hill no longer fits the roly-poly profile that his fans have come to love in movies such as Superbad and Cyrus. I've read that the newly minted Hill has lost 40 pounds.

Earlier this year, Hill hit a new and encouraging career mark in Moneyball, which probably represents the height his artistic achievement to date. In that movie, Hill played a brainy baseball analyst whose statistical approach to the game helped the general manager of the Oakland Athletics (Brad Pitt) put together a winning season.

Hill's latest - The Sitter - reportedly was filmed prior to Moneyball, but arrives in theaters in the midst of the holiday season. You may want to think of it as a blatant exercise in counter-programming, as well as a step backward for Hill.

Here's the thinking: With family-oriented fare such as Hugo, Arthur Christmas, The Muppets and the upcoming Adventures of Tintin crowding every multiplex, a raunchy comedy just might appeal to every disgruntled guy who dutifully accompanied a date to the latest Twilight movie.

And in a week of buzzless national releases, it's also possible that The Sitter will appease those who hate the idea that Hollywood -- with visions of Oscar dancing in its head -- tends to go prestigious at the end of the year.

I'm not in any of those groups, so for me, The Sitter represents a reminder of the kind of movies Hill may have to shed - along with the excess weight - if he's going to sustain a career.

Director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express and Your Highness) seems to be doing his best to obliterate memories of such early acclaimed work as George Washington and All the Real Girls. Although The Sitter boasts a couple of moments that try to make nice, it's a mostly distasteful romp through a series of implausible and profane gags, many involving kids who are too young for major exposure in this kind of comedy.

A pre-weight loss Hill plays Noah Griffith, a young lives at home with his single mother (Jessica Hecht). The plot contrives to have the reluctant Noah babysit for three difficult kids, an anxiety-ridden 13-year-old (Max Records), a precocious girl who hides behind thick layers of make-up (Landry Bender) and a sullen Latin-American adoptee (Kevin Hernandez).

The screenplay further contrives to have Hill's Noah score some cocaine for his girlfriend (Ari Graynor) -- with the kids in tow, of course. As if to declare its salacious intentions, the movie opens with Noah performing oral sex on Graynor's character, a favor that she won't reciprocate. Hey, I don't like giving away jokes in reviews, but you should know something about the movie's mindset.

Or consider that Hernandez' Rodrigo has a fondness for cherry bombs and frequent urination. I guess someone thought it would be hilarious to watch Rodrigo relieve himself on the dance floor in the middle of a girl's Bat Mitzvah.

Noah's search for cocaine (surely a worn-out substance as far as either comedy or drama is concerned) puts him in contact with Karl (Sam Rockwell), a drug dealer who displays a boundless but obviously false sense of bonhomie.

Rockwell is one of my favorite actors, and he's certainly game for a far-out role, but he's stuck in a movie that tries to temper its foulest impulses with occasional flashes of sensitivity. Case in point: The scene in which Noah informs Records' character that it's OK to be gay or another in which Noah tells off the philandering father of the three unruly charges for whom he ultimately and predictably develops some fondness.

J. B. Smoove, Method Man and other black actors can be found on the movie's fringes, but they're mostly restricted by writing that tends to be too caricatured to be funny.

Hill is likable enough to survive this kind of comedy, but little in The Sitter serves to amuse. Built around car theft, drugs, exploding toilets, profanity, and other forms of inappropriate or illegal behavior, The Sitter is one of those comedies that manages to be more unpleasant than funny.