Dopamine

This frail, grubby-looking independent feature follows the usual wispy boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-girl back formula, but in this case it's overlaid with pretentious speculation about whether sexual attraction is a matter of emotion or merely a chemical reaction involving pheromones that affect the nasal passages. The central couple are a software programmer putting the finishing touches to an interactive computer-generated bird named Koy Koy, and a teacher at a childcare center where the program is being tested on its pre-kindergarten target audience. The two are obviously destined for each other, but they have to go through a lot of hemming and hawing first--something that would be easier to take if leads John Livingston and Sabrina Lloyd weren't such a colorless pair and there weren't constant interruptions in which William Windom (playing Livingston's father) pops up to babble on about romance being a matter of elements and molecules. Dopamine is an uncommonly drab, dingy movie that seems grossly distended even at a mere 79 minutes. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by co-writer/director Mark Decena, co-writer Tim Breitbach, and costar Sabrina Lloyd; a 15-minute “making of” featurette; three deleted scenes; Decena's five-minute 1996 short “One of Those Days”; a brief director intro; and trailer. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a disappointing film.] (F. Swietek)