"Hysteria," With Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal "Tally ho!" shouts a flushed patient while her doctor applies manual stimulation in "Hysteria," Tanya Wexler's silly, featherweight comedy about the invention of the electric vibrator. Another woman spontaneously bursts into the "Sempre Libera" aria from "La Traviata." These treatments for "hysteria" take place in a special chair in which small velvet curtains obscure the patient's genitalia. In Victorian times, hysteria was a catchall medical term for what John Waters might call "female troubles." The ailments included nymphomania and frigidity (themselves now archaic terms) as well as depression and anxiety. In advanced medical circles a doctor-induced orgasm (a word not heard in the movie) to relieve tension in the uterus was the recommended treatment for those troubles. There are certainly laughs to be harvested from this period farce set in 1880s London and "based on true events - really," according to the film's winking tag line. Its point of view might be summarized in seven words: "Oh, those Victorians! What uptight, benighted fools! Most of the characters are male doctors, unaware that their intrusions on women's private parts to produce healing "paroxysms" are sexually gratifying, and women who don't know what's happening to them except that they love it and want more. For the detached doctor, the only occupational hazard is hand cramps. See, it isn't sex! It's therapy. The screenplay, by Stephen Dyer and Jonah Lisa Dyer, a husband-and-wife team, is as mechanically surefire as the magic wand that evolves out of a crude electric feather duster. Built by Edmund St. John-Smythe (Rupert Everett), a wealthy dilettante inventor, it is first wielded medically by his pal Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy). A progressive doctor and advocate of germ theory when the medical establishment was still using leeches, Mortimer is played by Mr. Dancy as a disciple of Hugh Grant in his sheepish, adorable man-boy mode. The movie is like a streamlined cartoon of "In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play," Sarah Ruhl's more complex and witty play. Mortimer begins his career as a sexual healer assisting Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), whose female-centered practice is so popular that he needs another hand, so to speak. Robert, a starchy patriarch, has two daughters: the demure, angelic Emily (Felicity Jones) fancies herself an expert on phrenology, and Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a feisty proto-feminist who runs a settlement house for the poor. Robert is so pleased with Mortimer's work that he grooms him as his successor and as a possible son-in-law, destined to marry Emily. But all bets are off once Mortimer glimpses Charlotte dressed up at his and her sister's engagement party. Charlotte is an ideal, progressive 21st-century woman whom Ms. Gyllenhaal imbues with her usual intelligence and confidence. To keep the story afloat the movie throws in a bogus subplot in which Charlotte's tangle with a policeman over an unpaid debt threatens to land her in a hospital for the criminally insane and facing a hysterectomy. Charlotte is not the only 21st-century phenomenon in the film. The vibrator may be a useful invention, but the central conceit here, that an electrical gadget is a miraculous substitute for intimacy, is as ludicrous as the notion that cybersex is better than the real thing. "Hysteria" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It is a sustained sexual joke with many feigned orgasms. Hysteria Directed by Tanya Wexler; written by Stephen Dyer and Jonah Lisa Dyer, based on an original story by Howard Gensler; director of photography, Sean Bobbitt; edited by Jon Gregory; music by Gast Waltzing; production design by Sophie Becher; costumes by Nic Ede; produced by Sarah Curtis, Judy Cairo and Tracey Becker; released by Sony Pictures Classics. WITH: Hugh Dancy (Mortimer Granville), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Charlotte Dalrymple), Jonathan Pryce (Dr. Robert Dalrymple), Felicity Jones (Emily Dalrymple), Ashley Jensen (Fannie), Sheridan Smith (Molly), Gemma Jones (Lady St. John-Smythe), Georgie Glen (Mrs. Parsons), Anna Chancellor (Mrs. Bellamy) and Rupert Everett (Edmund St. John-Smythe).