The urgently R-rated comedy For a Good Time Call… presents a setup seemingly designed in a laboratory for 85 minutes of breezy, stakes-free comedy. Lauren (Lauren Miller) aspires to a career in the New York publishing world, but has been humiliatingly discarded by her aggressively dull, self-absorbed boyfriend of several years, leaving her without an apartment. Katie (Ari Graynor) dwells in a dazzling Gramercy Park walk-up handed down from her deceased grandmother, but she can no longer afford to live alone now that the rent control has evaporated. The two are brought together by mutual pal Jesse (Justin Long, in distressingly broad cartoon queer mode), notwithstanding a collegiate encounter between the two women that established a childish two-way loathing. Naturally, Lauren is a button-down brunette and Katie is a free-spirited blonde, and the friction between the new roommates begins in earnest.
Having established its Odd Couple premise, the film adds a raunchy wrinkle: In addition to performing manicures and taking Chinese orders, Katie moonlights as a phone-sex operator, using nothing more than her cell phone and a shoddy website. Unexpectedly laid off and desperate to boost their household’s take-home pay, Lauren offers to manage Katie’s sleazy-yet-lucrative venture. Unsurprisingly, Lauren’s oversight results in a boom in clients and a growing bond between the two women, and before long Katie is training Lauren in the fine art of orgasm-faking so that the latter can pinch hit as an operator. However, the wispy narrative conflicts that occupy For a Good Time have little to do with the capitalist hiccups of a phone sex business. Instead, the film is doggedly focused on Lauren and Katie’s social and emotional tribulations: Lauren’s efforts to conceal the 1-900 scheme from her wealthy parents (Don McManus and Mimi Rogers); Katie’s pursuit of a potential romantic relationship with a regular client (Mark Webber); and both women’s uncertain navigation of their emergent crypto-sexual fondness for one another.
Such conventional comedic material is decidedly uncharacteristic terrain for Canadian director Jamie Travis, who established himself on the film festival circuit with award-winning surreal and avant-garde shorts. For a Good Time is so narratively rote and formally anonymous that it smells unmistakably like a work-for-hire, but Travis’ palpable apathy in only partly to blame for the film’s failings. Screenwriters Miller and Katie Ann Naylon reportedly based the script on their own misadventures as college roommates, but this real-world origin does little to polish the lackluster jokes and character arcs. The only unforgiveable sin in comedy is not being funny, and despite its provocative vulgarity, For a Good Time is dispiritingly laugh-free for long stretches. Graynor claims most the film’s best moments with her enthusiastic line-readings, but this isn’t enough to redeem the overall feebleness of the proceedings. Nor is the procession of distracting cameos from the likes of Kevin Smith, Seth Rogen, and Martha MacIsaac, who pop in to remind the viewer of superior comedies.
