For a Good Time, Call… (***)

Being the story of women who start a phone-sex service, this has cheesy exploitation flick written all over it, but was a nice surprise. Actually, it resembles nothing so much as a romantic comedy about platonic friends. To be sure, there is actual romance in the story, but the main relationship is between the two women, one of whom is played by Lauren Miller, one of the two women who wrote the screenplay. The other one, Katie Anne Naylon, is the one with actual phone-sex experience, which explains both the attention to detail—the need for a second person to handle billing, for example—and the the reason the plot centers around a now-waning business.

Miller is the nice girl, and Ari Graynor the party girl she’s hated since college, but then their gay pal (Justin Long) sets them up…as roommates, and they need money, this being New York, and the apartment being surprisingly large, and so…. You expect sex jokes here, and there are, but the tone is salacious, not smutty. The callers, a couple of whom may be recognizable from other films, are the subjects of humor, as you might expect, but not the objects of ridicule. In fact, the whole thing has a good-natured sex-positive tone that I liked. An encounter with a disapproving religious conservative is one of the funnier parts of the movie. To be sure, there is no deep meaning here, and the climax, if I may use that word, is a strained parody of a real romantic comedy ending. But real comedy is here, too.

IMDb link

viewed 8/29/12 7:30 pm at Rave University 6 and reviewed 9/6/12

Parade (***)

Tokyo is such a densely populated city that it seems like a fair number of the movies I’ve seen set there have this a subtext. Here four roommates, two of each sex, share an apartment, each coming and going and living the haphazard lives of twentysomethings. The movie is divided into segment focusing on each roommate: one who’s fallen for his best friend’s girlfriend; one who spends her time hanging out, waiting for her movie-star boyfriend’s occasional calls and hatching plans to uncover the call-girl ring that might be operating next door; one who’s kind of a wild girl; and one, the oldest at 28, who seems more stable than the others and is the only one shown working. And there’s a fifth roommate, a skinny homeless kid who happily shows up one morning to the confusion of the others. In the course of the film, we find out a little about each character, and they learn a little about each other. If there is a unifying theme, it’s how well do we know the people we know? (At one point, a couple of the roommates speculate on whether the newcomer might be the local serial killer, but his crimes turn out to be more petty.) The film is intriguing, but probably aimless for some tastes. The ending is possibly shocking, open to interpretation, but kind of anticlimactic rather than satisfying. One woman I heard, walking out of the theater, put it more succinctly. “Bunch of looneys,” she said.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz 5 [Philadelphia Film Festival] and reviewed 10/17/10

Funny People (***1/2)

With a couple of television shows and a slew of hits as producer, director, and writer, Judd Apatow would seem well qualified to create a movie about show business that also draws on his early experience as a stand-up comic (and, not incidentally, has lots of his show-biz friends in cameo roles). Apatow doesn’t act in the feature, his third as director (after The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up), but Adam Sandler, his one-time roommate, does. Sandler’s character is like a less-happy version of Adam Sandler. He makes movies like Re-Do, where he turns into a baby (with Sandler’s head), and Merman, where he turns into Ethel Merman. No, actually, he turns into a half-fish, half-human creature. The fake clips from these films are funny because they could actually be clips from movies Sandler would have made. On the other hand, Sandler has made a few more grown-up films, like Spanglish, Reign on Me, and Punch-Drunk Love. He’s played pathetic before (Punch-Drunk Love), but this may be the first time he’s played a character that is meant to be a little unlikeable. (I say meant to be, as I Now Pronouce You Chuck and Larry, among others, showed his ability to play a character that’s actually unlikeable.)

Apatow go-to-guy Seth Rogen also mildly departs from type by playing a sort-of-regular guy who mostly only curses when he’s on stage performing. He’s the unsuccessful comic (Rogen) rooming with a mildly successful comic (Jonah Hill) and a financially successful (but starring in an awful sitcom) actor (Jason Schwartzman). Schwartzman’s fake sitcom scenes are, again, funny because they so resemble actual awful sitcoms you’ve seen. Hill is almost the same vulgarity-spewing character as in Superbad or Knocked Up. Told that Rogen’s romantic interest (Aubrey Plaza) is “like a mouse,” he says, “Yeah, a mouse you want to stick your dick into.” Sandler represents the megastar living an empty lifestyle, with such a lack of actual friends, that Rogen, unexpectedly hired as his assistant and occasional joke writer, serves as his primary confidant.

The celebrity actor’s diagnosis with a potentially fatal illness spurs the plot, but whereas the easy thing to do would be to have Sandler completely transform into a new person, that’s not exactly what happens, and it’s his new assistant whose life gets turned around even as he watches the boss try to reconnect with an old, married flame (Leslie Mann). The first half of this movie is fairly light and fairly funny, and the second is sometimes funny but also serious. The plot sort of changes direction, but in a pleasing way. It’s two hours long, but feels better paced than Knocked Up. (And Rogen and Plaza, or Rogen and Sandler, make a more believable couple than Rogen and Katherine Heigl.) It’s still recognizably an Apatow property, and not just because his two young daughters act (quite well) in the movie, but also edges into the turf covered by someone like James L. Brooks, who made Sandler’s Spanglish as well as Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News.

IMDB link

viewed 2/6/10 on DVD [Netflix] and reviewed 2/9–3/1/10

Happy-Go-Lucky (***1/2)

Screenwriters and directors like to talk about story and character arcs, the processes by which a movie takes its characters and its audience from point A to point B. But Brit Mike Leigh, who is both writer and director, has made a comedy drama that arguably has neither of these. Leigh is best known for downers such as Life Is Sweet (bittersweet, really), Secrets & Lies, and Vera Drake. (To be fair, there was also the rousing Gilbert & Sullivan biopic Topsy-Turvy.) But here the title—and her name—fairly describes Poppy (Sally Hawkins), its main character. She’s chipper at the start and chipper in the end. If there’s a story arc, it’s the one anchored by a series of driving lessons with a humorously bitter instructor, whose no-nonsense demeanor barely discourages her from chatting him up.

Dressed like a box of crayons, in boots, Poppy seemed ditzy at first, but she’s not. What she is is another unique creation by Leigh and actress Hawkins, who is completely believable as the sort of quirky character that can seem artificial in lesser hands, or with a lesser script. (Leigh uses improvised rehearsals to flesh out his characters.) Unlike with most of Leigh’s other films, one character is the center of attention, and Hawkins, though not beautiful, commands it with wide eyes and mouth askew. And big boots. There are a lot of other characters: Poppy’s flatmate; her sisters; her doctor; a homeless guy who shows up for ten minutes, then isn’t seen again. To the homeless guy, she offers food. To the doctor, she offers to text him where it hurts. For a while, you may wonder where it’s all going, before concluding that it doesn’t matter. It’s to the film’s credit that one of the funniest scenes also turns out to be the most touching. No, there’s not much forward movement in the story. The forward momentum comes from the way Leigh and Hawkins bit by bit reveal the layers of her character. Like the driving instructor, our reaction to her changes as the film progresses. I had the thought that Poppy’s further adventures would make a great TV series. But I’ll settle for this.

IMDB link

viewed 10/15/08 [screening at Ritz Bourse]; reviewed 10/21/08