The OH in Ohio

(2006) ** Unrated
88 min. Cyan Pictures. Director: Billy Kent. Cast: Parker Posey, Danny DeVito, Mischa Barton, Paul Rudd, Miranda Bailey.

Billy Kent's unfortunately flat comedy The OH in Ohio tells the story of one of America's many women with sexual dysfunction. Locked into a deadened marriage with a high-school bio teacher played by Paul Rudd, Parker Posey's Priscilla has never had an orgasm. "I don't not enjoy it," she says of sex, but after a workshop with Liza Minnelli's vagina coach and a vibrator purchase from Heather Graham's lesbian sex-shop saleswoman, Priscilla decides, at long last, to try masturbation. Yep, that'll do 'er.

Once Priscilla gets her "oh" without her husband Jack, the relationship is over. Running toward the opposite of Priscilla's frigidity, Jack pursues a sexual relationship with a game student (Mischa Barton of The O.C.), while Priscilla starts, um, doing the town. Danny De Vito does his level best to inject humor and warmth as Wayne the Pool Guy, who embodies the message to stay open to romantic possibility (by the way...pools? symbol for vaginas!). The problem here is that all of the characters, while possible, aren't very plausible.

Priscilla's best buddy calls her "awesomely, unbelievably predictable." Adam Wierzbianski's screenplay is slightly less so, but then it's no great achievement to hand Minelli musty lines like "Liberate your labia! Value your vulva! Claim your clitoris!" or to make Posey systematically charmless and only belatedly help her to take it all back. Seemingly thirty years behind the times, The OH in Ohio has nothing new to say on its subject. The comedy misfires and the film winds up strangely—impenetrable.

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