On the Line (film)
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On the Line (2001) is an American romantic comedy starring Lance Bass and Emmanuelle Chriqui. The film was directed by Eric Bross. The film was written by Eric Aronson and Paul B. Stanton and was based upon their short film also entitled On The Line.
Bass plays Kevin, an advertisement employee, who meets a girl named Abbey (Chriqui) on Chicago's El train and forgets to get her phone number.
His dateless roommates — aspiring musician Rod, played by Joey Fatone; Eric, played by GQ; and art nut Randy, played by James Bulliard — soon begin a search for the girl, but mainly for dates for themselves, putting up posters around Chicago describing Kevin's conversation with Abbey on the train, and the phone number to their apartment. Kevin actually never gave permission for this — at least, willingly. Eric has the idea shot down when he originally pitches it to Kevin, but while Kevin is at work one day, Eric calls, and asks him to reconsider. It is poor timing, as Kevin is having a conversation with his boss, Higgins (Dave Foley). When he gives a "Yes" answer to a question from Higgins, Eric hears him on the other end of the line, and hung up. Soon, Eric, Rod and Randy begin taking calls from many girls, and going on dates with them, for their own enjoyment (although some of the dates were quite strange) and to find Abbey. One of the girls Rod dates was played by Joanie Laurer, formerly known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler Chyna. Not surprisingly, he loses to her in an arm wrestling match.
Kevin's high school rival, Brady Frances (Dan Montgomery Jr.), whose prom date left him for Kevin, soon picks up on this, and writes a story about it in the local newspaper. Kevin is suddenly the most famous person in Chicago, and is recognized everywhere he goes. Girls also become more attracted to him. Brady then sends his girlfriend, Julie (Amanda Foreman), who is rather bothered by his still-intense grudge against Kevin, on a date with Rod, which ends with her in the emergency room with a sprained ankle and a broken nose. She relays to Brady what's going on, and he prints the details in the paper, with the headline, "TRAIN MAN SCAM." Worst of all, though, Eric ends up going on a date with Abbey, who is told of the plot to find her.
The next day, Brady's story is printed, and Kevin finally sees Abbey again on the train platform. He calls to her, only to have her take her seat on the train and smack the paper with the headline against the window when he approaches, completely shielding her face from his. Kevin goes from popular to reviled by all, and is demoted to working the mailroom at the advertising agency (this, however, was over the fact that he was having problems with a co-worker on an ad campaign for a shoe company). Later that day, at the park playing baseball, Eric spills the beans to Kevin about having seen Abbey. An angry Kevin throws a glove at Eric, then decks him with a right hook. Things continue going downhill when Kevin learns his best friend at the agency, Nathan (Jerry Stiller), the other mailroom worker, suffers a heart attack. Kevin goes to see Nathan at a rehab facility, where Nathan tells him the story of both meeting his wife at a Chicago Cubs game, and catching a home run from Cubs legend Ernie Banks the same day, and how the two tied together. He gives Kevin the baseball, and tells him to try to find Abbey again.
Meanwhile, Rod, Eric and Randy, feeling guilty about messing up their friend's life, begin trying to find Abbey themselves, passing out fliers at the station. At first people aren't interested, until Eric makes a speech about being in love, ending it with, "Love may not make the world go 'round, but it's what makes the ride worthwhile." He gets a standing ovation from everyone on the train except Abbey, sitting in stunned silence.
Things soon start going uphill for Kevin. For starters, he is put back on the ad campaign project. He also puts out ads on billboards, asking Abbey to meet him at the platform where their train stopped on the day they met. When he goes to meet her, he finds many television crews covering the event live, and a crowd of spectators to cheer him on. After 15 minutes of Abbey not showing up, the TV crews start packing up and the spectators begin to disperse, but all stop when Kevin picks up a paper airplane thrown by Abbey telling him to look up. Kevin races up a flight of stairs to a breezeway over the tracks, where he asks Abbey for her name, and number. Abbey responds with, "Abbey, and I'd thought you'd never ask." They then kiss, much to the delight of the crowd at the station, and to the television viewers at home, and in a bar where his roommates are watching.
Life also gets better for Rod and Randy. Randy meets a girl at the bar while watching Kevin's meeting with Abbey, and finds that she, too, is interested in art. Meanwhile, Julie dumps Brady for Rod, who is offered a contract to the record label owned by his idol, Mick Silver (Bon Jovi's Richie Sambora), saying he liked Rod's demo tape, which Kevin sent in; and, for his degrading stories against Kevin, Brady is given an advice column in the Living section of the paper.
The film was heavily criticized, especially by star critic Roger Ebert, who said the movie was "...an agonizingly creaky movie that laboriously plods through a plot so contrived that the only thing real about it is its length."[1] Ebert's main problem with the movie was focusing more on the plot to find Abbey, rather than just letting a romance between she and Kevin blossom throughout the film, and focusing more on that. He did, however, say that Bass and Chriqui had good on-screen chemistry.
[edit] Trivia
During the credits of the movie, the film features a comedic clip of the Lance Bass and Joey Fatone who played two of the main characters being made up by fellow *NSYNC members Justin Timberlake and Chris Kirkpatrick. Justin and Chris played stereotypical homosexual wardrobe managers to great effect yet last *NSYNC member JC Chasez was unavailable and was not present.
The original screenplay for the film would have received an R rating but was rewritten to a PG so that it could be marketed to *NSYNC fans.
The short film on which the movie was based starred Troy Garity, Charlie O'Connell, and Eric Michael Cole.
