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

Last Thursday, I was lucky to score some free advance screening tickets to For a Good Time, Call…

I hadn’t heard anything about it, so I scouted YouTube for a clip.

Now the first time I saw the trailer I was a little skeptical about seeing it, but when I watched it again, I thought it could have some potential to be pretty funny. So I got my plus one and planned an evening of it.

The movie is a little more edgy and different from any old chick-flick or rom-com. If you know anything about the romantic-comedy formula, you know it goes like this:

Boy meets Girl.
Boy loses Girl.
Boy wins Girl back.

It’s the same for every rom-com, but it takes a good script to make a story fresh and new. For a Good Time, Call… follows two girls, Lauren and Katie, who have a bumpy start in college, but a few years later, they face money problems and are in need of a roommate. Their mutual friend, Jesse, suggests they become roommates to solve one of their problems. The only issue is they still dislike each other.

Lauren dreams of working for a high-end publisher in New York City, but the publisher has already hired someone but tells her that her well-to-do background prohibits her from seeing the world in an unique light so she gives Lauren some advice to take the summer to find herself.

My friend and I found Lauren and her friend Jesse to be relatable because we’re both are trying to make our way into the publishing industry. We both laughed out loud when Jesse (Justin Long) calls Lauren, saying, “Oh it’s just your 29-year-old intern friend.” Mind you, we both hope to land job before we ever reach 29-years-old, but appreciated that the movie showed the struggles of a young adult trying to get their first office job. It’s a tough world out there!

Then there’s Katie. She used to lived with her grandmother, but she recently died so she has to find a roommate quick to keep the lovely, spacious apartment. She does anything she can to make money. During the day, she works at an Asian nail salon, and by night, she works for a sex hotline.

Eventually, Lauren finds out what Katie’s night job entails. And with a desperate need to pay rent and just make some money in general to live, she offers her business-savvy ideas to help build Katie’s business. And so the girls start their own sex hotline!

The whole thing is quite comical, something much like the movie Bridesmaids. I think it’s always great when a movie shows off that women can be great comedians too! Women can have their minds in the gutter too, joke about it, and get a laugh or two out with some their friends.

Overall, I think if you’re looking for a good laugh or something out of the norm, you should check out For a Good time, Call…

After the movie viewing, the highlight of the night was having a Q&A with the screenwriter Katie Naylon, director and Toronto resident Jamie Travis, and the two main actresses of the movie Ari Graynor (Celeste & Jesse Forever, What’s Your Number?) and Lauren Miller (50/50, Superbad).  The most memorable thing they mentioned was the movie was sort of an autobiography based on Screenwriter Katie Naylon’s days when she actually had a sex hotline. Along the way, actress Lauren Miller became her roommate and learned about it. Years later, they wanted to write a script together and the best thing to do is write what you know. So they used their life experiences as references to create For a Good Time, Call…

For a Good Time, Call… is out in theatres August 31, 2012.

And a big thank you to Alliance Films for the tickets!