Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

For a Good Time, Call... Blu-ray Movie Review

For a good time, call some other comedy...

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown January 20, 2013

Predicting the hits or misses of any given comedy is a fool's errand. One man's laughs are another man's groans, which stands true even for the greatest of comedies. For a Good Time, Call... isn't a great comedy. I wouldn't even call it a particularly good comedy, although I have no doubt a select forgiving few will laugh themselves into a coma. First time feature film director Jamie Travis never quite nails the rhythm a more seasoned filmmaker might have hit with the material, co-writers Lauren Miller and Katie Anne Naylon swing suddenly, almost violently into conventional rom-com territory, and it's the guys, not the girls -- the cameos, not the leading ladies -- who walk away with Call's laugh-out-loud bits and funniest one-gag-wonders.

"You ladies are living some f'd up version of the American Dream!"

Free-spirited bad girl Katie Steele (Ari Graynor, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) has a problem. Without someone to help pay the rent, she'll lose her grandmother's apartment and be tossed out on the street. Across town, straight-laced prude Lauren Powell (Miller, Superbad) is having a few problems of her own. Dumped by her boyfriend (James Wolk, You Again). Fired from her job. In need of an apartment fast. It doesn't take a polished script to know where this one's going. Stars cross and fates align -- with the help of the girls' mutual GBF, Jesse (Justin Long, Live Free or Die Hard) -- and Lauren soon moves in with Katie. Battling and bickering, bickering and battling, the two soon find common ground and, by no small miracle of desperation and ingenuity, start a business together. But not just any business. A phone sex line. And had Travis, Miller and Naylon stopped right there and spent the next hour riffing on that little gem of a premise, For a Good Time, Call... might have amount to something special. Instead, the girls eventually have a falling out, only to learn, slowly, surely and with selfless sacrifice, that they belong together.

Without much to go on beyond a promising setup, there aren't a lot of memorable moments to be had. Graynor and Miller aren't just wildly incompatible, they're obnoxious good girl/bad girl caricatures, shoved to opposing extremes for the sake of what quickly reveals itself to be a lazy opposites-attract romantic comedy. At their best, they're a sex line Odd Couple reacting to a who's who of character actors that steal the show. At their worst, they're... well, they're Katie and Lauren, and you're a stronger genre fan than I if you manage to fall for either one of them. Then there are the romantic yearnings between the roommates, the will they or won't they pauses and glances between the frenemies-turned-besties, the budding declarations of love and what could have been even more unique: a two-pronged coming-out romantic comedy. It turns out Call is almost about two women realizing they're mad for each other. It's right there on the surface, and it isn't subtle either. At all. Rather than go the distance, though, it's just another half-hearted joke that doesn't go the distance, culminating in one of the silliest bouts of awkwardly penned word play you'll be forced to endure this year.

Fortunately, all is not lost. Graynor and Miller may not win over the comedy masses, but just about everyone else will. Long is hilarious (yet underutilized) as the girls' well-intentioned gay confidant, Scott Pilgrim's Mark Webber is sweetly affecting as a regular caller who has a crush on Katie, Don McManus and Mimi Rogers are wonderfully aloof as Lauren's well-to-do conservative parents, and 50/50's Sugar Lyn Beard chews up foul-mouthed scenery as Lauren and Katie's first (and last) employee. Then there are the cameos. The not-so-gentlemanly callers and sometimes oblivious passersby played by the likes of Seth Rogen, Kevin Smith, Ken Marino, Nia Vardalos, Martha MacIsaac and others. On set for a day at most, the supporting cast has a blast and injects a much-needed spontaneity into the proceedings that ebbs whenever Miller and Naylon feel the need to under-reach and over-script. And when the contrivances of the story press in, the R-rated and Unrated bits fall as flat as the perpetually face-first performances. For a Good Time, Call... has real untapped, unrealized potential, and that only makes it a tougher slog. If you get a kick out of girls behaving badly, this one's worth a rent. Otherwise spend your time elsewhere.

For a Good Time, Call... Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Clean and colorful, For a Good Time, Call... features a lovely little 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation free of serious flaws. James Laxton's perky palette is brimming with bright splashes of color -- pinks, golds and blues -- and loaded with playful primaries. Contrast remains consistent throughout as well, with warm, smartly saturated skintones, deep blacks and an abundance of not-too-crisp, not-too-soft detail. Edge definition is honed to near-perfection (near because minor ringing still crops up in a handful of shots), fine textures are natural and fairly revealing, and delineation isn't the least bit problematic. There also isn't any significant artifacting, banding, aliasing or crush to speak of, and only a handful of anomalies -- a brief burst of noise here, a negligible blip on the compression radar there -- will catch an easily distracted videophile's eye. (Guilty!) At the end of the day, Universal's transfer isn't exactly stunning, but then neither is the film's photography. It gets the job done, though, which is more than I can say for the comedy.

For a Good Time, Call... Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Call's sound design and, by extension, Universal's faithful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track doesn't stray all that far from the rom-com fold, heaping front-heavy conversation on top of more front-heavy conversation. But the rear speakers go above and beyond, grabbing hold of the film's perky soundtrack, the bustling city, the busy streets, the crowded locales, the voices bleeding through the walls of the small apartments, and every moan and scream that echoes over the girls' phone lines. I wouldn't call the resulting soundfield immersive per se, but it is suitably full and engaging, which is more than I can say for most romantic comedies. No, the LFE channel doesn't get much of a workout, and no, dynamics aren't all that impressive. No surprises here. Even so, low-end output is more than serviceable, and lends weight as needed. Dialogue, thankfully, is clear, convincingly grounded in the mix and perfectly prioritized, making Lauren and Katie's apartment a realized, lived-in space. Lines are never lost, voices never falter and there isn't an effect out of place. This one doesn't disappoint.

For a Good Time, Call... Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• R-Rated and Unrated Cuts: The Blu-ray edition of For a Good Time, Call... includes two versions of the film, an 85-minute R-rated version and an 87-minute Unrated Cut.
• Filmmakers Audio Commentary: An amusing, if chatty, speed-round commentary with director Jamie Travis, producer/co-writer/actress Lauren Anne Miller, executive producer/actress Ari Graynor and producer/co-writer Katie Anne Naylon.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 5 minutes): Five inconsequential deleted scenes. "The C Word," "Library Flashback," "Somebody Wrote That," "Doing the Dishes" and "Late Night Make Out."
• A Look Inside For a Good Time, Call... (HD, 4 minutes): A standard talking-heads EPK loaded with clips.
• My Scenes Bookmarking

For a Good Time, Call... Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For a Good Time, Call... tries. Oh, how it tries. Shot in just sixteen days on a budget of $1.3 million, it's almost easy to forgive the film its trespasses. But no amount of weeks and no influx of cash can grant a movie the comedy fundamentals it sorely needs -- rhythm, timing and a payoff to a clever premise -- and Call comes up short in every regard. Universal, though, does not. With an excellent video transfer, a solid DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track and a decent supplemental package, For a Good Time, Call... at least delivers on a few fronts. I'd recommend sticking with a rental, but if raunchy, R-rated femme comedies are your thing, you could do worse that this one. Of course, you could also do better...