The 2013 film, Online, opens with a bunch of male co-workers going out for pizza. They’re celebrating the promotion of John Wild (Morgan Ayers), who has gone from being a preacher’s kid to being the youngest executive at their company. Before they dig into the pizza, one of the older men says a quick blessing over it….
Yes, it’s one of those films!
John has a well-paying job, a big house, and a beautiful and supportive wife named Mary (Kelsey Sanders). For most people, that would probably be enough to be happy for at least a few years but not for John! John finds himself thinking about his high school girlfriend, Adrianna (Esseri Holmes). John was in love with Adrianna, or at least he thought he was. But then, one day, she told him that her father’s company was forcing them to relocate to France. Both John and Adrianna were heart-broken.
(My family moved around a lot when I was growing up. Whenever my Dad got a new job, we moved to a new town and often a new state. Personally, I would happily trade that month in Tulsa for a few years in France.)
Despite the fact that he’s happily married and he knows that he shouldn’t, John decides to look Adrianna up online. He uses a site called SocialFriends.com because everyone knows better than to run the risk of getting sued by Facebook. (My favorite Facebook’s substitute was Degrassi‘s Facerange.) It turns out that Adrianna has not only returned to America but she also lives nearby!
Unfortunately, Adrianna is married now. Even more unfortunately, her husband is a French cosmetics heir named Pierre (Byron Herlong). Pierre spends all of his time complaining about Americans being materialistic and arrogant. Adrianna replies that, if it wasn’t for those “arrogant Americans,” he would “be speaking German right now.” Boom! You tell him, girl! Pierre doesn’t have a snarky reply for that!
John reaches out to Adrianna. They have dinner at a fancy restaurant. They talk. They catch up on old times. They eventually share one kiss. Of course, John doesn’t bother to tell his wife about any of this and instead, he just tells a lot of lies about having to work late. However, Mary’s not dumb. She knows that there is something her husband isn’t telling her, especially after the credit card bill comes in and she discovers how much he’s been spending on dinner. Mary’s mother, who has never gotten over being cheated on by her own husband, hires a private detective to follow John around.
John’s mistake, one of his co-workers explains, wasn’t just that he reached out to Adrianna and then lied to his wife about it. John’s mistake is that he allowed himself to dine alone with another woman to begin with!
Online is one of those low-budget indie films that really makes you appreciate directors and editors who know how to keep the action moving at a steady pace because the film was filled with so many slow spots that it was next to impossible for me to really focus on it. My mind kept wandering as I watched the film. I also got a bit annoyed that, while John was given a chance at redemption, Adrianna was not. If John was portrayed as being someone who, in the midst of a mid-like crisis, made a mistake than Adrianna was essentially portrayed as just being a brazen homewrecker. That said, the film did feature Pierre being put in his place and I appreciated that. Arrogant Americans for the win!
Through the Shattered Lens 