HOME PAGE A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
Let's see, you're a filmmaker looking for a documentary subject that can have a catchy title about something that everyone is curious about but that only a minority fully understands. You should choose the World Wide Web, of course. There must be a cornucopia of fascinating people hanging out there in cyberspace whom you could interview.
Having a topical idea for a movie, however, is not necessarily the same as having a good one or having one that you know how to turn successfully into a motion picture. Doug Block's HOME PAGE chronicles the life of one the Web's more bizarre inhabitants, Justin Hall, a 21-year-old student with foot high hair, who likes to display full frontal nude images of himself on his web page. Having him be the star of one of the first documentaries about the Web is like having the first documentary on American politics be about David Duke. Both represent the fringes of their worlds, but the danger is that non-savvy viewers will not realize this. Many parents, for example, already fear that the Web world is populated with perverts and scam artists lurking around every corner.
This criticism would be less relevant if HOME PAGE were a better-constructed documentary or if Justin proved an interesting person to interview. But neither is the case. The documentary is so poorly lit that the images are frequently indecipherable and background sounds sometimes drown out the speakers. The average home movie is of better quality. Justin, an extrovert, likes to chronicle details of his sex life on the Web, which his girlfriend just laughs about. She does wish he would describe her with "richer" language, however.
The filmmaker interviews his own very bored wife several times. In one of these interviews, he asks her opinion of his project. "What do you think of what I'm shooting?" he inquires of his disinterested spouse. "I'm not looking for intense melodrama." And he certainly doesn't find it.
The fatal blow in HOME PAGE comes when you realize that the title is only a pretext to interview the people in the movie, and they just aren't compelling characters. About the only connection to the Web, other than random quotes from so-called experts, is watching people enter raw HTML code into computers -- easily, one of the most boring endeavors in modern life and one that has been rendered unnecessary by modern software anyway.
HOME PAGE goes on way too long at 1:43. It is not rated but would be an R for nudity, profanity and drug usage and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: www.InternetReviews.com
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