On_Line

A fine example of digital filmmaking, and Weintrob and his co-writer, Andrew Osborne, manage to raise some serious issues regarding the Internet without taking themselves too seriously.

Weintrob's background in interactive media keeps the film's technology unusually current, but his predictable tongue-clucking over Internet relationships places him squarely in the Luddite camp.

Acted with enough zest by its cast to give these not especially endearing people a poignant human dimension.

The film is hardly profound, but the form perfectly fits the content..

Most of the action in this 2001 indie drama takes place on computer screens, with grainy faces framed by sharp little boxes; the 21st-century conceit is topical enough but the characters and their problems couldn't be more stale.

Indifferently written, passably acted, resourcefully shot in video with enlivening splashes of local color.

Listless, self-absorbed slackers stare into computer monitors, groan about their lives and moan during cyber sex in On_Line. It makes you wonder, is there is a market for soft-porn movies for lonely geeks? Isn't that what computers are for in the first place?