Disconnect

Director Henry Alex Rubin has only helmed documentaries before Disconnect, so it seems fair to cut him some slack for dramatic creakiness. Some. Rather late to the table with its hand-wringing about the way we live now, Rubin's film, from a didactic script by Andrew Stern, wrangles Facebook bullying, credit fraud and underage porn into an issue-driven patchwork of lives at once frayed and braided. A distracted dad (Jason Bateman) strikes up a yearning instant-message rapport with the stealth tormentor (Colin Ford) of his loner son (Jonah Bobo); a young husband and wife (Paula Patton, Alexander Skarsgard) fail to cope with losing both their child and their financial security; a TV reporter (Andrea Riseborough) gets too deep into her story about an online rent boy (Max Thieriot). Too diluted by its fussy, phony comprehensiveness, the case being made here just doesn't seem credible: How can a movie about what the Internet does to us be so devoid of spontaneity?