Jim Hunter (hunterjt13)

A former English professor with curiosities about his sexual identity rooms with a modern-day fop in Manhattan.
This is a quirky, whimsical comedy that has more than a few chuckle lines delivered by the irrepressible Kevin Kline. Kline's character is a fop, a fool who fancies himself a gentleman, and with over-wrought aphorisms his instruction of Louis, played by the demure Paul Dano, provides much of the film's delightful comic moments.
There are times when the film overdoes its quirk, especially in the falsetto voice of John C. Reilly and some of the situations Louis's sexuality puts him into. On the flip side is the Katie Holmes character; the bland actress plays "the girl," a part with no personality and little use to the film's plot.
Overall, The Extra Man features of a fine comic team in Kline and Dano, but their talents could have been put to better use had the film been more subtle; if only Miranda July, who adds just the right pinches of quirk, could have directed it...

A student turns tricks on the side, hiding her profession from her father and the police.
As a genre, a character study should have an interesting character, but it seems as though the filmmakers believe that Sasha profession alone makes her interesting. It doesn't. Compare Sasha to Elizabeth Shue's character, Sera, from Leaving Las Vegas When we're introduced to Sera, she takes pride in her work and her ability to transform herself; A Call Girl doesn't explore Sasha attitude regarding her work, but we can deduce that she looks at it with an insouciant shame. Sera has a cruel pimp who's eventually killed; Sasha has cruel would-be pimps, but the plotline gets dropped halfway through the film. Sera falls in love with the Nicholas Cage character; Sasha settles for some guy we see twice in the whole film, and their relationship history is reduced to "I wanted to ask you to the movies before." "Why didn't you?" "I don't know." Clearly, Sasha simply isn't developed, and the main conflict of the film, her money troubles, reduce the resolution to a math problem rather than a human problem.
Overall, A Call Girl is how not to do a character study because it missed the important point: have a character worth studying.