Doug Galecawitz 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

xstatix I had expected so much more from this movie. I felt that the trailer was good and left me wanting more. I was intrigued by the trailer which led me to actually go and watch the movie.I was disappointed though after seeing it. It didn't so much focus on the theme of the movie about chemicals or casual sex as I had expected but rather alot of other little details (the guy's work, etc). I felt that the movie had good potential though. I felt like alot of elements were there to make it good but it didn't fall through or they left things hanging. Could have expounded more on how sex is just hormones or what not. Up to this day, I'm not sure exactly what can make the movie better. I just knows it lacks something. Have yet to figure out what.

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.

peterhoffman I would tend to agree with creamygreen on the predictability and stock archetypes used to fulfill the writers premise. But the more interesting thing about this film is the premise itself. Can love be boiled down to just science? Can the build up of dopamine make me want to cuddle? Science is always struggling against the nature of human beings with such things as religion and human emotion. Such intangibles make the separation between what you feel and what you can prove the cornerstone of any good debate. The premise for this movie was a good one, it's the execution in the writing and scene development that fell apart. I would love to see the writer do something different with this premise and see whether or not it will draw all of us in. After all aren't we all familiar with something we just "know" but can't prove?