EIFF Review: Alchemy

Posted by: Scott Hayes  •  October 7, 2005 @ 11:59am

Filed under: Reviews

The EIFF does not have to be all about art films and world cinema, apparently. Sometimes it can have movies with light themes, expressed in insouciance, and doused in butter.

Welcome to Alchemy, a modern version of that classic 80s flick Electric Dreams. Set in the heady world of a university experimental psych lab within a computer science department, a scientist named Mal has developed an emotionally-interactive computer but has lost his funding and his academic appointment. He's going to be evicted from his lab unless he can publish within two weeks. So he goes to his ex-girlfriend who works at a women's magazine named Belladonna; not exactly a scholarly periodical, but the publisher and editor agree to report on the findings of a computer v. human contest for the affections of a woman.

This must have been made with a Big Mac budget because all of the production values are not there: the sound quality is poor to the point of not being able to understand some lines and the lighting design was not well thought-out. That aside, this would have been much better as a sitcom, because pretty much all of the elements are there. Just add a laugh track and it's right on.

Still, I enjoyed myself enough. Alchemy is simple and predictable, but kinda fun. What I thought was most remarkable was that there were several main actors who closely resembled somebody more famous. Barbour looks and acts like Christian Bale. His character is a lothario â€" I mean professor â€" nicknamed Dr. Love for his lectures on the subject. Chalke is the test subject who reminded me a lot of Catherine Keener. And her ex-boyfriend (Logan Marshall-Green) could easily pass for Ashton Kutcher, since that is who he must have been channelling to achieve his character.