Cinema: On the Street

THE HAPPY HOOKER

Directed by NICHOLAS SGARRO

Screenplay by WILLIAM RICHERT

There is not a great deal to say about this pea-brained adaptation of a best-selling paperback by Xaviera Hollander, once secretary of the year in The Netherlands and, more recently, New York City's most prominent madam. In the old days, the book might have been called "spicy," delving as it does into the intimate details of the author's more elaborate entanglements. The movie—rated a no-risk R—is short on specifics of any sort and stringently unimaginative. If anything, it seems to be trying comedy, although...