On the Line

Not to damn with faint praise, but "On the Line," the new romantic comedy featuring two singers from the ineradicable musical fungus known as 'NSync, isn't nearly as bad as you think it is.

This film's natural audience is giddy preteens and teenagers with piercing screams and unshakable 'NSync devotion, people who will buy their tickets not to see a movie but to watch Lance Bass and Joey Fatone act as cute as possible for ninety minutes. Such an audience was present at a recent public preview screening of "On the Line" - and one could almost hear them searching desperately for something to make them scream in joy as references to failures by Leon Durham, songs by Def Leppard and the Who, and the pleasures of riding on Chicago's Loop went flying over their heads.

These references have no innate goodness, but do reveal "On the Line" is not a mere sop tossed to 'NSync fans. In fact, an unbiased viewing confirms that this film is a real live slightly above-average romantic comedy. That doesn't make it good, since no genre is as completely beholden to its boring conventions as the romantic comedy, but it does mean that it's at least vaguely pleasant to watch - assuming, of course, that you can tolerate hyena-like shrieks from younger members of the fair sex at every high point in the film.

About those conventions: Bass plays Kevin Gibbons, an ad exec in the Great City of Chicago who has everything he needs except that little extra bit of assertiveness that gets you that plum client, that lucrative promotion, or that special woman. All three come into play in this film, but the third of these occupies most of Kevin's attention - specifically, a gem of a girl he met and chatted up spectacularly well at the Adams/Wabash L train station, but whose name and number he was too reticent to get. He decides to draw the line at incompetence of this magnitude, and plasters the city with posters urging her to call him so they can meet again. Numerous completely unnecessary complications intervene, including several masterminded by Fatone's character Rod, but as everyone in Chicago knows, the Loop never closes completely on true love.

Or something like that. As everyone knows, romantic comedy plots exist solely to provide opportunities for stars to act cute. Bass and Fatone have made millions of dollars already by acting cute, and they act cute enough in this film that they make it work in its own modest way. Bass, in particular, cuts quite a charming figure as he meanders through his hornet's nest of insecurities and attempts to get Rod to act like a real human being for once in his life. His dream woman is played by Emmanuelle Chriqui, and she acts smart and cute enough to convince you that she could be the stuff of someone's daydreams. And the film is short enough that you don't have to stay convinced for long.

Yet Eric Aronson and Paul Stanton, the screenwriters, also put in many opportunities for the stars to step outside their cutsie-pie reputations - although the writers do shy away from even vaguely foul language as if they're afraid someone will put a Parental Advisory sticker on the film. You might not suspect that Bass would shock his crowd by drinking beer, punching people and jamming to the music of the Reverend Al Green, but he does all of these in this film. Agreeably cantankerous Jerry Stiller also gets a few moments to strut his stuff, although he's also kept on the short vulgarity leash and thus cannot express his true vituperative genius. And director Eric Bross keeps the action moving quickly enough both to satisfy an audience with a short attention span and to avoid the pitfalls of overextended pathos.

In other words, "On the Line" is a slightly above-average romantic comedy: meaningless, diverting, companionable and completely unmemorable. It's neither the world-beating work of art your 13-year-old cousin will think it is nor the devastatingly boring, crassly fan-oriented piece of crap most of you undoubtedly wish it were. The impulse to hate on Bass and Fatone is completely understandable, but you need to save your venom for a more worthwhile target - like, say, their singing.

WHY IN THE HELL DID I WATCH THIS MOVIE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

1) Last week was the height of Midterm Season, an evil time of the year in which professors assess whether or not we students care enough about our grades to cram desperately to make up for the classes we missed or slept through earlier in the semester. I had been toiling on one particularly evil midterm, an assignment in which I had to come up with the style sheet for the New Yorker by induction using one article, for the previous three days pretty much nonstop. I needed to get out and see a movie.

2) I have been watching far too many movies that have artistic principles and integrity and such things lately. These movies are fun to watch but hard to review, as I feel it necessary in general to spend time on my reviews proportional to the amount of artistic effort put forth to make the movie. I needed to get out and see and review something stupid.

3) I miss Chicago, and this film is definitely set in Chicago, the fact that the major newspaper in the film is the "Chicago Daily Post" notwithstanding. (This major newspaper also publishes a headline which reads as follows: "Cub's edged out in extra innings." I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen at the Tribune.) Chicago Symphony Orchestra banners hang matter-of-factly in the background downtown, I've almost been run over at many of the intersections in the film, the 'Nsyncers play 16-inch softball...the whole film has the tang of certain photogenic portions of the city in a way which is normally reserved for films set in NYC. So it seemed like a good idea to get out and review something stupid set in Chicago.

4) The other movie I could have gone to that evening was "Thirteen Ghosts."

NO, REALLY, WHY THE HELL DID I WATCH THIS MOVIE IN THE FIRST PLACE?

I have no earthly idea. Were it not for the presence of the estimable Robert Kahn, I probably would have left Lowest Pentagon City 6 theaters without having actually seen the film, as just being in the theater with a crowd composed entirely of girls of a median age of thirteen made me feel creepy. They expertly ignored us, of course; on the rare occasions when I accidentally made eye contact with one of them, they shied away as if I were some kind of rapacious sexual predator, which didn't help with the creepy feeling. Having Robert there made it better because pedophiles don't normally travel in pairs, at least to my (limited, of course!) knowledge.

Robert also proved his estimability when it came time to resist the various inanities of the emissaries of Hot 99.5, a radio station whose format can be best described as "moronic pop." Kevin and Chris (a man and a woman) hosted the screening with such boundless, mindless energy and enthusiasm that one wondered if they had been grown from the same mold culture that produced the stars of the film. They were expert at getting the young women to produce the above-mentioned shrieks, and I will be very surprised if said shrieks do not have a significant impact on my long-term hearing.

So if you read more than a little striving to be completely objective in the review above, it was because I was prepared to completely hate the film and everyone associated with it and everyone who watched it besides Robert and me when the film started. And if you read more than a little pleasure at the fact that no one in the theater knew who Leon Durham is besides Robert and me, well, you probably understand why. Unfortunately, as we left the theater, I think I heard Bass rapping over "Let's Stay Together," although the idea was so horrifying that I repressed the memory to the point where I'm not entirely certain that Al Green was in the film at all.

Watching this film was an interesting anthropological experiment, in that I was exposed to a subculture which I quite rightly avoid most of the time. Many people pay thousands of dollars to go to Africa to see a group of people whipped up into a frenzy by music and ritual, although I'm told in Africa they use better beats and more soulful vocals. I'm not going to a movie like this again unless someone pays me a lot more than I got paid for this one, though.

So step up with the dough, party people. I think.

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