TV REVIEWS : ‘Sexual Healing’: Boring, but Safe

Advance publicity for the 40-minute featurette “Sexual Healing” (Sunday night at 10 on Showtime) tells us that the seriocomic short delves into the potentially titillating topical subject of phone sex, but “in a warm, touching, non-exploitive manner.”

Just what the racy yet reactionary ‘90s have been waiting for: A look at the saucy world of 900-prefix sex lines, Capra-corn style.

Anthony Edwards stars as a lonely schoolteacher, first viewed making an awkward romantic advance toward an unwitting female friend (Mare Winningham, in a pre-credits cameo). Recovering from his rebuff in bed with the classifieds, he decides to dial a line that hooks up phone-sex partners, and soon gets a call back from Helen Hunt. Equally lonesome, she’s eager to get some ultra-”safe” sexual kicks away from her bloodless marriage (to “Seinfeld’s” Jason Alexander, playing it straight and bewigged here).

No real twists ensue, other than that Edwards wants to consummate the fantasy relationship in person, Hunt doesn’t, and they both end up tentatively on the road to “healing” after their brief encounter via Ma Bell. The message, if any, is that a little vicarious, semi-personal contact is better for the soul than none at all.

There is, indeed, as promised, a good-naturedness at play here, extending from the extremely gentle way the sexual aspects are handled to the film’s raison d’etre as a benefit for the Minority AIDS Project. (Everyone worked for free and Showtime is donating $25,000 to writer-director Howard Cushnir’s charity of choice.)

Good will isn’t drama, of course--and the final minimalistic effect is so underwhelming that even the prudish might wish the film would get “exploitative,” or something--but it’s certainly safe.