Dopamine (2003)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Sick Product of a Sick System

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Beautiful, moving film.

This is a movie I rewatch from time to time. Its a really good story in general.These characters/actors act very normal. None of that big Hollywood over dramatic acting. Its regular people in everyday situations that deal with love, trust and the unknown. Sure, its a love story of sort, but it attacks it from a different angle than the "blindly in love, romeo and juliet" scenario that has been beaten to death.I must admit I have a crush on the lead actress (Sabrina Lloyd). Her relationship with Rand ( John Livingston ) is heartwarming but not on steady ground. All in all, its one of my favorite movies in my ever expanding movie growth.

this movie plays a decent straight man to adaptation's more frantic meditations on this phenomena love. there are those that walk through life and prefer ugly truths and those that prefer poetic lies, generally those that claim to live for the former reveal themselves as the latter. this movie starts out in the territory occupied by the former. the idea that the crazy little thing called love is nothing more than the delusion applied to a vast web of chemical reactions and pre-programmed responses. that love does not exist but is completely fictional in our mind to explain the power of said chemicals. note that i do not use the word "merely" when referring to chemicals, as i do not underestimate the power of them. as the movie and story unravel it drifts into the territory of denial. the beautiful lie as bukowski put it. it's alright though. the fact that the movie has the courage to explore the concepts in the first place is enough to make me like it.so what have i said about the movie? well acted, adequately filmed, and all the usual jazz that you should of course expect from professionals filming a movie. what really takes this movie off is that the characters seem really fleshed out from their first moments on the screen. the writers don't seem inclined to want to insult their audience. these could be people you know, or once knew. even some of the more minor characters you feel could be fueling their own movie. it might be interesting to have a set of movies centered on other characters and have the thrust of this movie as viewed through their background narrative. the actors themselves manage to capture their characters and embody them with subtlety. these are intelligent characters the likes of which are rarely found in romantic comedies. there is both romance and comedy in this. the comedy being a more off the cuff indirect manner that is less written and more observed by the simple act of acting as real people tend to act. as for the romance it seems messy, intellectualized, complex, difficult, and moving. all in all it seems believable excellent job 9 out of 10

I really enjoyed the unfolding of these characters, all of which have their own challenges.The interplay between the programmers is especially witty. Bruno Campos is very funny and Grundy plays a great straight man.Great visual portrayal of San Francisco.Sarah has a genuineness about her that reflects reality, not stereotypes or cliches.I look forward to future works by Decena and Breitbach and they continue to evolve as filmakers.The Sundance process is one that needs to be supported and I hope to see the Sundance Film Series be a regular thing.

I saw Dopamine at Sundance and I loved it. It was the first movie, to my knowlege that delved into how all humans are chemically programmed from birth, and how awareness of this can take the magic out of life and of love. The question is: Can we overcome our programming. Should we even try? The pitfall for this kind of topic, is usually the story gets bogged down with details and science, but that is not the case here. The characters are all extremely believable. You care for them and they make you laugh as well. Mark Decena did a wonderful job of creating a very good cast to deal with the script and the production value is very good. I was really blown away by the use of the High Definition video format because it looked beautiful. There are no explosions, no huge crane shots, just a tight, unique story that poses new questions about a classic topic, love. Ryan