Dialing for Dingbats

Ever see those late night "900" Partyline commercials and wonder if anybody really meets from those phone lines ? Dialing for Dingbats shows that romance can be had meeting on a 1-900 Partyline. There are lots of zany characters and lots of funny lines.

I first watched this, like many others, on the lamented, beloved USA Up All Night program. This is a work of what I refer to as "feral art"; that is, it is unintentionally brilliant, accidentally artful. The movie bleeds an off-kilter, feverish surrealism and feels more like a strange dream than most of your big-budget attempts at translating the fractured, bizarre sense of dreams to the screen. Highly recommended.

This is one of my all time favorites. It's wacky, fun..not your typical movie. It takes you back to the days of "Partylines" and singles trying to hook up. So it's real fun for those of us who grew up in the days before the internet started up, and it seemed the phone was the way to get connected. It really brings back memories of the good old days! This movie is a nice romantic comedy, but like I said it's quirky and entertaining along the way...even odd at times! The main story line is about a young man looking for love and decides to give the party line a try. You will follow him in his adventure searching for love and in which it seems "all the wrong places". Give this movie a try and remember to rate it so hopefully one day it will come out on DVD.

Simply put, DIALING FOR DINGBATS, particularly when viewed at 3 AM during a USA Up All Night broadcast, achieves an accidental tone of dream-logic and VHS-surrealism that, in my opinion, makes it a work of art. Yes, it's corny and technically inept, but so what? Do your dreams always have state-of-the-art special effects? Mine don't. This movie is just bizarre in a way that few movies are, because it isn't trying to be weird, it just is. A masterpiece. Another movie that achieves a similar sort of vibe is BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR. Incidentally, DIALING FOR DINGBATS and BEYOND DREAM'S DOOR are two of my top five favorite movies ever made.