OxfordPress.com

Grade: B-

Verdict: It's an 'N Sync movie; what do you expect?

Details: Starring Lance Bass and Joey Fatone. Directed by Eric Bross. Rated PG for langauge and crude humor. One hour, 25 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: “On the Line” knows its target audience very well.

And that's about all it — and you — needs to know. Lance Bass and Joey Fatone, two-fifths of 'N Sync, have stepped out from the back of the band and made their own bubblegum-licious romantic comedy, and it's harmless.

It's also silly and sloppy, but that won't matter a bit to the 9-year-old girls already lined up at the box office. Nor should it. The movie's sole purpose is to get those squeals and giggles going as Lance and Joey act adorable while the flimsy plot unfolds.

Which is: Kevin (Bass) works at a Chicago ad agency where his boss is a drip, his co-worker is a snake and the mailroom clerk (a PG Jerry Stiller) is a mensch. Thanks to serendipity — our new favorite movie word — he runs into a cute girl (Emmanuelle Chriqui) on the El. She loves everything he does. The Cubs. Al Green. And they can both name all the American presidents in order.

Kismet, right? Well, it would be if he'd gotten her name and phone number instead of going all shy and tongue-tied.

But Kevin's in the ad biz, so he does what he knows how to do best. He devises an ad campaign to find her, plastering the city with posters asking “Are You Her?” (ungrammatical but well-intentioned).

Fatone shows up as Rod, one of Kev's four pals who also get into the “Are You Her?” act. They say they're trying to help, but they're actually using it to, um, “meet” girls. (The more unsavory implications, which send a pretty bad message, will hopefully go over younger heads.) Another complication is a newspaper writer who's been assigned to cover the story but hates Kevin because he stole his girl in high school.

Anything else worth mentioning? The mailroom scenes may creep you out, given the current anthrax situation. So, perhaps, will the unabashed, constant and very major product plugs for Reebok.

Two other 'N Syncers appear at the very end, pretending to be fluttery makeup/hair assistants working on the movie. “'N Sync,” one of them sniffs to the camera. “More like 'N Stink!”

Oh, how those girls will squeal and giggle.

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, (none)