Because the Internet keeps evolving so quickly, it follows that the majority of movies about it are doomed to be hopelessly outdated, ready to join the scrap heap of discarded AOL floppy disks. But more than just technology needs an upgrade: Attitudes about the cyber-world haven't changed much since Sandra Bullock was pegged as a mutant for ordering pizza through the web in 1995's The Net. By now, computers are a common utility in American homes, yet filmmakers still view them as apparatuses that keep people apart, forbidding them from making real connections and leading otherwise healthy lives. To that end, Jed Weintrob's histrionic techno-drama On_Line suggests logging off, but it first exploits the anonymous community of voyeurs, narcissists, loners, boozehounds, exhibitionists, and other deviants who are married to their web-cams. Before things take an inevitably ugly turn, Weintrob plays host to an alluringly textured and resonant server, bringing his cast together through imaginative split-screens and pixilated orgasms. Still smarting from a sudden breakup with his fiancée one year earlier, a half-shaved Josh Hamilton sucks down bottles of peppermint schnapps and loses himself in Intercon-X, a live erotic web site that he runs with his roommate, Harold Perrineau. Acting as a sort of digital pimp, the site facilitates streaming video sessions between clients and sexual performers, assuring privacy for both parties. But things get complicated when Weintrob's alienated netizens—including a fantasy nymphette (Vanessa Ferlito), a "man on man" host (John Fleck), a Valium-popping artist (Isabel Gillies), and a suicidal gay kid from Ohio (Eric Millegan)—reach out to one another. Meanwhile, Hamilton obsesses over a mysterious, beautiful woman who keeps her web-cam running 24 hours a day. On the fringes of its increasingly dreary and overdetermined scenario, On_Line touches on the possibilities and pitfalls of romance on the Internet, where people can become false projections of each other's desires and share a chemistry that translates awkwardly from the virtual world to the real one. 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. His lost souls are suicidal, alcoholic, sex-addicted, or some combination of the three, stuck in perpetual indulgence for as long as they're glued to their ergonomic chairs. In Weintrob's mind, human growth involves taking the laptop outside to parks and coffeehouses; the weak-willed are left to stay inside and masturbate.