For a Good Time, Call…
Lauren (Lauren Anne Miller) and Katie (Ari Graynor) are Manhattan roommates who do not get along. They were set up by their gay BFF Jesse (a disarmingly funny Justin Long). Hard-up for cash and viable jobs, they decide to start a phone-sex service right at home. Katie is born for the job – talking dirty brings out the best in Graynor, a beguiling actress who’s like Kate Hudson before bad choices stalled her career. Lauren has to ease into bad girl mode, but Miller fast discovers her inner slut goddess. It turns out that using your voice to get guys off does wonders for a friendship. That’s it. A plot that’s so five minutes ago, sub-premium cable might reject it. And yet For a Good Time, Call . . . slaps a goofy smile on your face and makes it stick. It helps that the two stars are irresistible, so much so that you don’t care that the movie was done fast and on the cheap and looks it. It also helps that director Jamie Travis gives Graynor and Miller free reign to run wild. It helps even more that the multi-talented Miller and fellow screenwriter Katie Anne Naylon (an unscarred veteran of phone sex operating) can write smutty zingers without compromising the story’s scrappy innocence. In a rare instance of truth in advertising, the movie actually is a good time.