Review: "For a Good Time, Call..."

There's a difference between comedy and zany behavior. "For a Good Time, Call..." aims for the former but mostly contains the latter.

This Sundance Film Festival favorite is about two down-on-their luck Manhattan roommates who start a phone sex business to make ends meet. Now, phone sex is like prostitution lite -- a sex act is involved, one-sided in terms of pleasure received, money is exchanged, though the parties never meet in person.

Big in the '80s, it seems anachronistic in this day in which countless terabytes of free porn are available on the Web. I would think visually-inclined men would go that way instead of opting for an audio-only format. Not to mention, at $4.99 a minute, the Great Recession must have shrunk the customers base considerably.

But it's also why Katie and Lauren are able to clean up so well. Katie (Ari Graynor) is blonde, outspokenly slutty and under-motivated. Lauren (Lauren Miller) comes from privilege, is prim and a bit awkward. Katie works the phone sex thing as a side gig, making $1 a minute.

Lauren is predictably appalled when she finds out, but has the business sense to point out Katie could make a lot more if she stopped being a contractor and went into business for herself. They name their company "1-900-MMM-HMMM," which seems a recipe for misdialing the competition.

Over time, the two opposites learn to work together and even become close, the uptight one loosening up and the crazy cohort gaining some semblance of responsibility. I should point out that this is essentially the same plot as "Night Shift" with Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler, minus the morgue component.

In the finest Judd Apatow tradition, "Good Time" is a product of nepotism. Lauren Miller is married to comedian Seth Rogen, who appears in a cameo along with other famous funnymen and -women like Kevin Smith, Justin Long and Nia Vardalos.

Miller is also a co-screenwriter and co-producer with Katie Anne Naylon, her actual college roomie when they were at Florida State University. They supposedly based the story on their real-life experiences. (University of Florida alum, insert joke here.)

As we see in flashback, Lauren and Katie have A History. Back in college they barely knew each other, until there was an incident involving a brand-new car, a plastic cup and a full bladder. Ten years later, their mutual best friend -- catty gay caricature Jesse (Long) -- suggests they shack up together when they're both low on cash.

Katie inherited her grandmother's fabulous apartment overlooking Gramercy Park, but the rent control is going bye-bye. Meanwhile, Lauren's lawyer boyfriend (James Wolk) tells her he needs some space to evaluate, and wants her to move out of their apartment.

Sugar Lyn Beard has a short but memorable turn as a business recruit with an impossibly squeaky, girly voice -- and then, she takes it up (or down) a notch.

First-time feature film director Jamie Travis is a bit shaky with the pacing. Sometimes the jokes and loony bits fly at us so fast the audience can't hardly field them all. Other sections linger and mope.

The language coming out of the girls' mouths while they're working the phones is supposed to be shocking in its filthiness, but the wind-up overshadows the pitch.

Graynor has the bigger, flashier role as the hard-bitten girl with an embarrassing Big Secret, but I never bought her as authentic -- she's more personality than person. Lauren is more relatable, but it seems like the movie has all her moves are laid out for her five minutes in.

"For a Good Time, Call..." has a handful of genuinely funny bits. But compared to other films in the recent trend of R-rated female-centric comedies ("Bridesmaids"), it doesn't find the sweet spot.

2 stars out of four

Review: "Going the Distance"

"Going the Distance" is this year's "(500) Days of Summer" -- something that superficially resembles a genre film, but is hipper, edgier and about 40 I.Q. points smarter than the average romantic comedy.

Justin Long and Drew Barrymore make for a terrific couple trying to keep a West Coast-East Coast romance alive. Long in particular has developed a really sharp sense of comic timing, and elevates the role just through his quizzical reactions and off-center line deliveries.

But I think it's the creative team that brings a vibe of freshness to a stultifyingly stale genre.

Geoff LaTulippe makes an audacious debut with his original screenplay, and documentarian Nanette Burstein -- she made the wonderful but little-seen "American Teen" a couple years ago -- directs her first narrative film.

The pair behave like a couple of eager kids who don't yet know the romcom rules they're not supposed to break, and deliver a better movie because they fail to acknowledge the boundaries of the familiar boy-meets-girl tale.

For instance, one of the telltale signs of the romantic comedy is the couple's inevitability. Some kind of challenge or set of obstacles is placed in their path, and the entire movie becomes a mechanism to delay that which the audience knows is bound to happen.

In "Going the Distance," we truly don't know if Erin (Barrymore) and Garrett (Long) will end up together. The barriers in their way are not simple hurdles that can be overcome by the telling of an uncomfortable truth, or some other quick fix. They're deep, life-changing conundrums about how much of your own life you're willing to give up in order to share it with someone else.

Burstein and LaTulippe use the form of the raunchy comedy as a prism through which to glimpse some heavy issues.

And there is plenty of raunch. On Garrett's end, he has a couple of excellent wingmen to lubricate the way with dirty jokes and inappropriate behavior. Dan (Charlie Day) is Garrett's roommate, who's not big on the whole person space thing, and cynical Box (Jason Sudeikis) works with Garrett at a New York record label.

Yeah, the music business ... is there any industry facing such a monumental paradigm shift and soul-crushing downturn? Oh wait, I know: Newspapers! Turns out that's Erin's gig. She's just finishing up a summer internship (at age 31) at the New York Sentinel, where she can barely get anything into print.

(Matt Servitto nails the harried, hectored nonchalance of her editor, having to put off eager beavers like Erin asking about permanent jobs when they're about to lay off a hundred veteran journalists.)

Erin and Garrett hook up for a quick six-week romance, after which she has to go back to San Francisco to wait tables while living with her sister and her family. But things go so well, they decide to give the long-distance relationship thing a try.

Their first, desperate coupling after months of separation happens on the sister's dining table. Christina Applegate is priceless in the role of the fussbudget sibling who scrubs the table all day, and probably would burn it if she could afford to.

The film drags a bit about two-thirds of the way through, but it's possibly unavoidable as Erin and Garrett transition from puppy love to the more troublesome, mature kind that requires sacrifice. They struggle and snipe, and the movie turns sadder but wiser.

There are so many dumb movies out there about falling in love. "Going the Distance" is one smart flick that's not afraid to ask what happens next.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Youth in Revolt"

Michael Cera has become an unlikely but bonafide movie star by essentially playing the same role over and over. (Don't knock it; John Wayne lasted 40 years that way.)

In Cera's case, he's always the smart, verbose kid of ironic disposition and dubious social skills who's desperate to win the attention of a particular girl, or just one in general.

"Youth in Revolt" is a refreshing turn for him because he plays the prototypical Cera character, Nick Twisp, but also Francois Dillinger, the "supplementary persona" Nick creates to lend him the bad-boy courage he needs to land the girl of his dreams.

This comes about from Nick's accurate observation, "In movies, the good guy gets the girl. In real life, it's usually the (jerk)."

Francois looks just like Nick, though a bit older, more sallow, with a faint mustache and facial peach fuzz. He's perpetually smoking a cigarette, staring at Nick with disquieting blue eyes while suggesting he do all sorts of unpleasant and usually illegal things.

Nick is naturally so nice and meek that Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), the smart, French-loving girl he meets while staying at the Restless Axles Trailer Park in Ukiah, Calif., has to hurry along their dawdling courtship with the instruction, "Kiss me, you weenie!"

Alas, events keep conspiring to keep them apart. Soon Nick has to move back to his home in Oakland with his mom (Jean Smart) and her ignoramus boyfriend (Zach Galifianakis).

With Francois' help, Nick arranges to get thrown out of his mother's home and move in with his dad (an ill-used Steve Buscemi), whom he finds a job for in Ukiah. But then Sheeni's overly religious parents send her to a private school in Santa Cruz.

Even worse, Sheeni's longtime suitor, the poet/athlete Trent -- who's heard of but not seen -- just happens to be transferred to the same school.

The film was adapted from C.D. Payne's novel (actually, a series) by Gustin Nash and directed by Miguel Arteta, who's mostly been doing TV lately but got his start with similarly quirky indie fare like "Chuck & Buck" and "The Good Girl."

It's funny in an urbane way, and I enjoyed the characters and spending time with them.
A few things don't quite add up. Sheeni remains something of a mystery -- she's more a collection of a traits a geekboy would imagine his perfect mate to have rather than a believable character.

The movie also has a habit of discovering and discarding interesting minor characters that we wish would stick around a little longer. There's Lefty, Nick's ostensible best friend, who's in the first couple of scenes, goes away for an hour, comes back and then disappears permanently.

Fred Willard has the beginnings of a nice turn as a kooky neighbor with a thing for helping illegal aliens, but again, by the time he turns up again we'd mostly forgotten about him.

Sheeni's brother (Justin Long) shows up just long enough to get everyone stoned and then leave. Vijay, a fellow sex-addled student at Nick's new school, accompanies him on an excursion to Sheeni's school that seems like it was lifted entirely from an '80s T&A flick.

But the good traits of "Youth in Revolt" outweigh its detractions. Francois steals every scene he's in, which is appropriate for a movie that celebrates, or at least recognizes the usefulness of, bad boys.

2.5 stars

Review: "Planet 51"

As animated films go, "Planet 51" is like the food purchased at the theater concession stand: Empty calories, consumed by people barely aware of what they're stuffing in their faces, and soon forgotten.

The set-up is a comedic take on the old alien invasion theme, but with the little green men as the natives and humans as the evil invaders. It's a neat twist ... except it was already done earlier this year in "Battle for Terra," a superior animated flick that few people saw.

"Planet 51" has some nice ideas, but it never really escapes orbit. The humor is aimed at very small children, who may enjoy the slapstick physical comedy and goofy critters. If you count your age in double digits, though, you're apt to find it quite tedious at times.

The in-joke is that the aliens of the town of Glipforg are stuck in the equivalent of our 1950s, with ducktail hairdos, rock 'n' roll and plenty of paranoia about an invasion from beyond the stars. The most popular film franchise is the "Humaniacs," which features creatures with a single giant eye turning people into mindless zombies.

Of course, there are a few differences from Earth. The denizens have antennae and frond-like things for hair, no noses, four fingers, and an aversion to pants and shoes. They've got hovercraft instead of cars -- although they resemble '50s Chevys and Cadillacs -- and instead of dogs they've got little domesticated pets that look like the creatures from the "Alien" movies. One, joke-ily named Ripley, pees acid.

The hero is Lem (voiced by Justin Long), a teen with things starting to go his way: He just landed a job at the astronomy observatory, and summoned up the courage to ask out the girl of his dreams, Nera (Jessica Biel). His life gets thrown into turmoil when an American astronaut lands a spacecraft in his backyard, setting off a flurry of panic.

Turns out the spaceman is Charles T. Baker (Dwayne Johnson), a solitary explorer who thought the planet was uninhabited, "not full of giant sea monkeys dancing to the oldies," as he puts it.
Lem lends Charles a hand, which brings about the ire of the army general (Gary Oldman) determined to do the invader in before he melts their tanks or whatever.

Rounding out the cast are Seann William Scott as Lem's nerdy best friend, Alan Marriott as a proto-hippie who wants to give peace a chance, and John Cleese as the head scientist whose prescription for every problem is a brain-ectomy.

Directed by Jorge Blanco from a script by Joe Stillman, "Planet 51" has pretty impressive animation considering it didn't come out of either of the 'toon powerhouses, Disney and DreamWorks. Too bad these good looks are wasted on such a dull and derivative movie.

2 stars

DVD review: "Drag Me To Hell"

Your average popcorn-munching movie-goer probably only knows Sam Raimi as the director of the "Spider-Man" blockbusters. Hardcore horror fans realize that Raimi honed his filmmaking skills doing "wet work" with cheapie gross-out flicks like the "Evil Dead" series.

For this neglected latter group, his newest movie, "Drag Me to Hell," is like love letter and a bouquet of roses -- dripping in blood, that is.

Alison Lohman (who's 30 but looks 16) plays Christine Brown, a bank loan officer who gets hit with a nasty gypsy curse when she refuses to grant an extension on the foreclosure of a one-eyed old crone's (Lorna Raver) house.

Soon Christine is being haunted by shadowy tormenters who bust up her home and smack her around. In one nasty bit, a fly forces its way down her throat while she's asleep, only to reemerge at an inopportune time (still buzzing around) while she's lunching with her beau's (Justin Long) snooty parents.

Raimi (who also co-wrote the script with brother Ivan) blends the humorous and the horrendous to generally enjoyable effect, although there are times -- such as a big séance scene -- when the movie takes itself so seriously, you keep expecting hysterics to break out that never arrive.

Video extras are pretty skimpy. The DVD and Blu-ray both come with the theatrical and unrated version (which amps up the goo in several key scenes) and a 30-minute series of video diaries that touch on various elements of production. The most entertaining is learning how stunt coordinators rigged Lohman with a special nose tube for the scene where she spews blood all over her boss. (Who among us hasn't had that dream?)

The Blu-ray version also comes with a digital copy of the film for uploading to a portable video device.

I'll say this for "Drag Me to Hell": It has one of the coolest endings of any movie I've seen this year.

Movie: 2.5 stars
Extras: 1.5 stars