Review of For a Good Time, Call...

Lauren (Lauren Miller) and Katie Steele (Ari Graynor) both need a roommate. Lauren just broke up with her boyfriend, Charlie (James Wolk) and Katie is behind on the rent. They are introduced by a mutual friend, Jesse (Justin Long) and just like that Lauren and Katie remember they hated each other in college. Realizing they have no alternatives for living in such a nice apartment the two enemies move in together and patch up their differences. Soon after they move in, Lauren loses her job, and Katie shares a little secret, she's an operator on a phone sex line. With job prospects not looking so good, Lauren becomes a call screener for Katie and they start their own phone sex line called 1-800-MMM-HMM. The phone sex line is so successful that they hire another talker named Krissy (Sugar Lynn Beard) but Krissy is a fundamentalist Christian, more interested in saving souls than talking dirty. With nowhere else to turn Katie asks Lauren to join her as on air talent? What does Lauren do? When Lauren gets a legitimate job offer at a publishing firm, and her ex asks her to come back, does she leave her new BFF Katie in the dust? I like this movie, but it's a qualified like. It made me laugh, especially Justin Long's character. There is also a very funny cameo by Seth Rogan, that I was not expecting. I don't like how they seemingly had to choose phone sex operator as a profession, Hollywood has this fixation of making all women either prostitutes, and now a step up from prostitutes, phone sex operators. Where is the phone sex operator booth on career day? Don't go looking for it ladies, as much as Hollywood wants you to do it, don't be tempted. I was also put off by yet another portrayal of a Christian as a Bible thumping fundamentalist. To Hollywood Christians are basically one joke characters. And finally, this movie makes a mistake that many comedies make, it tries to get serious, and that's when Katie, loses all her edge and becomes a conventional, even hackneyed character. The ending is muddled and meaningless, which added to my ambivalence about this movie, but Justin Long is consistently funny as the ubiquitous gay character, Seth Rogan is funny in his cameo, and the banter between Miller and Graynor is pretty good for the first half of the movie, but falters. The pacing is slow, for a 90 minute movie, it seems much longer. This movie is not for kids, hence the R-rating. A well-deserved R for all the sex talk. There shouldn't have been so much, and it wasn't even the funniest part of the movie. For a good Time Call or more accurately…for half a good time watch.