Purpose

A supporting cast of motley middleweights lends minimal intrigue to this instantly dated take on Internet business ethics. John Elias (John Light) is one of those geeks with altruistic goals and one great idea, who starts a dot.com business to make cyberspace better for everybody, but gets sucked into a bacchanalian, paper-millionaire world by sales whiz Robert (Jeffrey Donovan). Soon Elias is rich beyond his dreams, but in gaining the world, has he lost his soul? Of course he has. Following a blueprint worn thin from Wall Street to Working Girl to Boiler Room, writer-director Alan Ari Lazar's Purpose follows its lead character down the slippery slope to corruption, before offering an avenue for trite corporate salvation. Paul Reiser, who is nearly unrecognizable as a business professor, and Mia Farrow, who is totally unbelievable as a lollypop-sucking stock market cutthroat, are joined by reliable vets Peter Coyote and Hal Holbrook in a film that looks good, but offers nothing new to say. Greed is bad. We get it already. Optional. (D. Fienberg)