PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 6/30/03)


It's the age-old question: is cyber-sex really a substitute for the real thing? In the movie On_Line, John Roth (Hamilton) seeks to answer just this question. John, lonely after being dumped by his former fiancée, spends his days watching the erotic website he and his buddy Moe (Perrineau) run. John becomes caught up in the social solitude that the internet offers, but when he tries to connect with people face to face, he finds that it takes more than a point and a click to make real relationships work.

On_Line has all the trappings of edginess — the sex, the technology and the softcore masturbatory online sex. It even looks edgy, shot in digital video and relying heavily on split screen to visually connect people separated by physical distance. But at its heart, On_Line is just an old-fashioned movie about people, relationships and making connections in an isolated world. And in this sense, the movie is very successful. The cast of characters, including various employees and clients of the sex site, convincingly exude a sense of profound loneliness and misery, caught up in a world that brings people together in some ways, yet leaves them so far apart. They are so miserable that it is almost painful to watch them grasp at relationships with people they might never come into contact with. The film raises the question of whether the ties that people make online are, in fact, real connections at all, and its most engaging scenes are those that involve face-to-face meetings between the characters. The intensely awkward reality of socializing is even more poignant and comical when contrasted to the relative comfort and control of meeting people on the Internet.

The movie falls flat at the end, unnecessarily linking all of the characters in what seems to be an attempt to show how it really is a small world after all. But, despite the forced ending, its message remains clear — in sex and love, there's nothing like the real thing.

— Laine Ewen