The 24-year-old British actress Juno Temple is blessed with the prettiness of a 1930s chorus girl. Unfortunately, her dainty looks seem to get her parts like “Afternoon Delight,” where she’s a stripper who becomes the houseguest of unappealing marrieds Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Jeff (Josh Radnor).
Rachel and Jeff have a cute young son, but the spark has gone out of their marriage, and an excursion to a strip club nets them McKenna (Temple). McKenna is turning tricks on the side, much to Rachel’s implausible shock and titillation. (She’s never heard the term “sex worker” because, you know, suburbia.)
In the 1970s, everybody would have climbed into bed together and worked out the kinks, but this is 2013, and director Jill Soloway’s script is sitcom-conventional. And so Rachel and her gal pals discuss partners and abortions at one party, while Jeff stays home for poker with the boys. And McKenna — because you can take the stripper out of the sex club but you can’t take the sex club out of the stripper — decides to crash the boys’ night.
There are some bright one-liners in the beginning, but the comedy/drama mix is an uneasy one, especially considering the shabby way the film treats McKenna, as a tart who’s just there to improve some yuppie sex lives.
