On the Line

Rating

Director

Eric Bross

Screenplay

Eric Aronson, Paul Stanton

Length

1h 25m

Starring

Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, Emmanuelle Chriqui, GQ, James Bulliard, Al Green, Tamala Jones, Richie Sambora, Amanda Foreman, Dan Montgomery, Dave Foley, Jerry Stiller, David Fraser

MPAA Rating

PG

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
In On the Line, a chance meeting on a train turns into a seemingly fruitless search by an advertising executive to find the woman he thinks he loves.

N’Sync’s Lance Bass and Joey Fatone star in this teen romantic comedy about lost love and the search to regain it. Bass plays Kevin, a Chicago advertising executive who has spent much of his life struggling to become someone important. One day, while travelling home on the train (known in Chicago as ‘the El’), Kevin meets Abbey (Emmanuelle Chriqui), an unusual girl who knows all of the U.S. presidents in the order that they served, and who makes paper airplanes.

When the two part company after their ride together, they neglect to get contact information for each other and realize shortly thereafter that they are in love. Kevin decides he must find her and posts flyers around the city seeking his lost love. Writers for the local newspaper sees this display and decide to do a human-interest story for the paper. Kevin’s newfound celebrity nets him influential jobs and dates with dozens of women who find the situation romantic and pretend to be the girl from the train.

Kevin’s friends, Eric (GQ), Randy (James Bulliard) and Rod (Fatone), seek Kevin’s permission to date the women who call in for him. He steadfastly denies their requests, but after an unfortunate communication misstep, the three gain permission to do so.

On the Line is a cardboard version of the teenage romantic comedy. The performances aren’t stellar, as Bass smiles too often and even when he’s depressed, he doesn’t seem unhappy. Chriqui is good, but when surrounded by a lack of talent, she doesn’t shine as bright as she otherwise might. Fatone, GQ and Bulliard perform well below expectations. Their roles in the film are neither necessary nor interesting.

Director Eric Bross has taken the screenplay by Eric Aronson and Paul Stanton and done nothing interesting with it. The screenplay is weak, poorly structured and contains unnecessary and unwieldy dialogue. Bross takes no liberties or exceptions to make the movie better; he simply films it for the sake of pleasing hundreds of N’Sync fans. What the producers don’t take into account is that this kind of movie has a niche audience but nothing more. It’s just not good enough.

On the Line has some mild charm and is a solid, middle-of-the-road film with no future outside of a young female audience. Its acting and screenplay aren’t so atrocious as to be eligible for the infamous Golden Raspberry awards, but they certainly won’t capture a nomination from the Teen Choice Awards, either.

Review Written

October 4, 2002