Movie review: ‘Connected’

Had “Connected� simply followed the logical trajectory of its amusing opening, in which director Tiffany Shlain recalls a compulsive need to check her email during lunch with an old friend, her film might have proven a vivid and rollicking look at society’s out-of-control attachment to current technology.

Instead, Webby Awards founder Shlain conflates the hazy theory of “connectedness versus interconnectedness� with a highly personal tale of her beloved father, Leonard, a scholarly surgeon and bestselling author who fought brain cancer, and how that struggle — along with the filmmaker’s concurrent, risky pregnancy — came to exemplify how we are all linked in the 21st century. The result is both heady and unconvincing.

Fast-paced and slickly edited, the movie is also so dizzyingly jammed with animated and archival imagery — both illustrative and symbolic — that it often feels more like a fancy art project than a feature documentary (Shlain coyly dubs the film an “autoblogography�). Shlain’s and Peter Coyote’s alternating narration further densifies matters.

Aided by evocative home movie clips and warm footage of Leonard Shlain’s latter days, the film ultimately works best as a daughter’s heartfelt tribute to an enormously devoted and emotionally generous parent. Unfortunately, that’s just not enough to, well, connect us to the bigger picture.

“Connected.� MPAA Rating: PG for thematic material including images of nudity, drug use, war and smoking. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes. At the ArcLight, Hollywood.