''Dialing for Dingbats'' is a 1989

romantic comedy Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...

directed by Peter Slodczyk and distributed by

Troma Entertainment Troma Entertainment is an American independent film production and distribution company founded by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz in 1974. The company produces low-budget independent films, primarily of the horror comedy genre. Many of them pla ...

. The distribution company describes the film as "light hearted".

Plot

Randy, a lonely and shy man, meets a woman through a party line but communication problems complicate their date.

Reception

The film was considered "the first serious examination of the world of dingbats on the phone" by the ''Orlando Sentinel''. A retrospective very negative review states that "This film couldn’t have been made in any other time than the late 80s, and not just for the snapshot of the bygone pre-internet dating scene mechanisms. It has a colorful VHS-era kitsch and an ungodly amount of earnest but bad jokes to the point it becomes surrealistic. The film takes too many detours to fill up the slight seventy-eight minute running time, with both commercial parodies and actual footage from other Troma films shoehorned in." '' All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger'' (co-written by

Kaufman Kaufman or Kauffman may refer to: People *Kaufmann (surname) ''Includes Kaufman, Kauffman, Kauffmann'' Places * Kaufman, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Madison Count * Kaufman, Texas, a city in Kaufman County * Kaufman County, Texas, ...

and

James Gunn James Francis Gunn Jr. (born August 5, 1966) is an American filmmaker and executive. He began his career as a screenwriter in the mid-1990s, starting at Troma Entertainment with ''Tromeo and Juliet'' (1997). He then began working as a director ...

) states that : "Troma tackles yet another socially important issue with the addiction of 1-900 party lines. This is the first film about

phone sex Phone sex is a conversation between two or more people by means of the telephone which is sexually explicit and is intended to provoke sexual arousal in one or more participants. All parties participate voluntarily; it is typically accompanied ...

References

External links

* 1989 films American independent films Troma Entertainment films 1989 romantic comedy films 1989 independent films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films Films produced by Lloyd Kaufman Films about telephony {{1980s-US-film-stub