Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss (2004)

It could have been a lot trashier -- and more shoddily produced. Sure, Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss hits all the requisite titillating-TV-movie marks, from kinky sex and soul-numbing drugs to the rock & roll antics of the Hollywood elite. But it's handsomely appointed, generally well-acted, and free of the heavy-handed moralism that makes, say, Lifetime original movies so distinctly puritanical. That's not to say Call Me has any particularly deep point to make. Underneath the superficial salaciousness, it's a rather tame American Dream fable drenched in easy irony -- which makes Jamie-Lynn DiScala (pouty, condescending Meadow from The Sopranos) the perfect choice to play Heidi Fleiss. Although she's more conventionally attractive than Fleiss, DiScala perfectly captures the snarky, horse-toothed mien her real-life counterpart evinced during her stay in the tabloid limelight. (It appears that some sort of dental appliance helped with the physical approximation.) With Fleiss' story so ingrained in the public consciousness, the film must find its drama in exploring her relationships: her exploitation of and by a coke-addled older madam (pitch-perfect Brenda Fricker) and her education in the ways of power by a heavily fictionalized movie-producer john (enjoyably sleazy Corbin Bernsen). The only really false note is the script's none-too-subtle suggestion that it was her liberal middle-class upbringing that misaligned the future madam's moral compass. Maybe Call Me gives off a whiff of Lifetime after all. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide