A genuinely cute movie is nothing to sneeze at, since so many comedies are either coarse or cloying. But “cute” doesn’t necessarily merit the price of a first-run ticket, either.
Your taste for cute will determine your willingness to spend money on “The Oh in Ohio,” a nicely played blend of the sweet and risque. This is a movie about sex in Cleveland.
I realize that last sentence might have scared off some potential customers. At first, the sex is happening between Priscilla and Jack (Parker Posey and Paul Rudd), who’ve been married for a few years and seem depressed.
Jack is upset because his wife has never had an orgasm. When asked how much she enjoys sex, Priscilla answers, “I suppose I don’t not enjoy it.”
The entire relationship founders when Priscilla tries out a vibrator from a sex shop and Jack discovers her in the act. He falls into a foolish affair with a willowy student (Mischa Barton, from “The O.C.”), and Priscilla decides to see if she can replicate her newfound sexual energy with another person and not just a sex toy.
The film takes an unexpected turn toward a stocky pool salesman named Wayne (Danny DeVito), who tries to sell Priscilla on a pool. Adam Wierzbianski’s script has an understated running theme about swimming as a metaphor for pleasure – or maybe just letting go.
There is much about the plot that defies belief, but director Billy Kent creates an agreeable space for a bunch of good actors to get in the groove. Paul Rudd, as he proved to the world in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” is one of the most inventive comic actors around, and Parker Posey rarely misses when it comes to finding the heart beneath the brittle, witty shell.
DeVito is in his gentle-troll mode, which he does well. Keith David is properly robust as Jack’s buddy, who gives a fair assessment of his friend’s condition (“There are men, and there are babies. And you are a baby”). An unbilled Heather Graham is fun as a lesbian sex-shop owner, and believe it or not, Liza Minnelli scares up a few laughs as the leader of a masturbation self-help group. (Wait, is “masturbation self-help” a repetition?)
An engaging group of people and some funny lines are almost enough to make it all work. Throw in the location shooting in Cleveland, and you’ve got something truly … cute.
Parker Posey (left) and Liza Minnelli in “Oh in Ohio.”
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