surfandski
Rare independent film about the nature of love, is love and feelings all chemistry or are humans blessed with something special that no other animal has? Well produced and with an excellent cast this film is carries along softly and yet never boring. Everything feels real and interesting. The director is a born filmmaker, unfortunately I don't see any other films-to his credit. We should see more of this very talented cast in the future. Checkout Nicole Wilder as Machiko, you can't play cute and sensual any better than that. Hope to see more films from this director and cast. If you are tired of watching the same crap over and over again, get yourself some Dopamine.
George Parker
"Dopamine" is one of those all to many little one man band indie start-up flicks sorely lacking in resources...financial, creative, etc. The flick wanders around the lives of three guys who are into creating a virtual computer character while focusing on one (Livingston) and his romantic involvements with a teacher (Lloyd). A bleak exercise in pseudo intellectualism, this flick delivers a big dose of the cold and clammies where the warm and fuzzies should be as it ploddingly and boringly meanders drunkenly into a variety of issues. Obviously contrived, clumsily written, stiff and awkward with characters it's difficult to care about and horrible music, "Dopamine" is a good flick to miss. (C-)
tprofumo
This is a nice, well intentioned indie film, the kind that I like to support because it tries to examine the lives of real people, and not the cardboard cut outs Hollywood usually fashions its films around.Unfortunately, Mark Decena's "Dopamine" falls victim to many of the same cliches and off-the-shelf plot devices found in countless main stream Hollywood films.The plot has a couple of computer whiz types visiting a San Francisco bar where their paths cross with a girl artist/pre school teacher. The hero, Rand, and the girl, Sara, are immediately attracted to one another, but Rand is too laid back and too cautious to make his move and so his cocky, arrogant buddy Winston (Winston?) winds up going home with the girl for a one night stand. It ends badly and Winston thinks that's the end of it.From there we find out all about the boys, who are in the middle of developing a computer generated pet, a sort of chia pet in cyberspace that you don't even get to water. But some Japanese businessmen are hot for the idea and have been bankrolling them for the past three years.The plot thickens when they wind up having to give it a test run in a pre-school class where guess who just happens to be one of the teachers? Sara's skeptical about the idea, but she likes Rand and the two of them start dating.One can't go too much farther without giving away the plot. But this is where this picture falls down. First because, unlike a lot of current American films that have a plot, but no subplot, this picture is almost equally divided between the Sara and Rand romance and the development of this animated Tweedy bird. It's too much balance. It needed far less Tweedy bird and more human characterization. But the confusion doesn't stop there, for an even silly subplot is the idea that human emotions are really sparked by chemical changes or excretions, thus the title of the film. So occasionally, as if this somehow is funny, we zoom inside people's bodies for a look at their nerve endings excreting the proper chemical at the proper time.Once would have been cute. More than once was not and never did it come off as entertaining.Anyway, Sara and Rand wind up facing some relationship roadblocks and that's where this really sort of sags. Rand, it turns out, is building Tweedy bird, a pet that will never leave you, because he has abandonment issues. Sara is occasionally promiscuous because -- well I can't tell you without a spoiler alert. But I shouldn't have to. Sara has a deep dark secret, but the thing is, its the same secret that has propelled every day time soap opera and Lifetime made-for-TV movie for the past 30 years.Beyond the script, however, the film goes pretty well. The direction is fine and the photography adequate for a low budget indie, although a little too artsy at times, especially on its transition scenes, some of which seem rather unnecessary.The acting is uniformly good, although the hero, played by John Livingston, a sort of Ben Affleck look alike, is a little too laid back to be really believable.But high marks go to Sabrina Lloyd as Sara. She rings about everything you could ring out of the role. She is really very believable when finally fessing up about her dark secret, making you want to comfort her, even as you want to strangle the script writers for this over used plot twist.Lloyd, although perhaps lacking the stunning good looks for mainstream stardom, could be the next Indie queen. Nice piece of work on her part.Overall, though, the picture gets a low 7 out of 10.
ArizWldcat
I was so excited to have some coveted tickets to this movie at Sundance. The story was just okay. The director was so sweet when he got up to talk about his film before the showing. His voice cracked a bit when he talked about how lucky he was to have found his wife and to have loved her for 15 years. Awwwwww. So I really wanted to like this movie, but I just didn't see any chemistry between the two main characters. I didn't dislike the movie, but it's not one that I will see again.
