Startup.com

This fast moving, entertaining documentary charts the rapid rise and fall of a dot com.

Two old high school friends, Tom Herman and Kaleil Tuzman, want to get rich. In the heady days of the internet gold rush - when venture capitalists are throwing money at anyone with a half-baked idea and a domain name - their idea for a 24/7 one stop local government site secures $18 million in funding.

But after growing from eight to 200 employees in the space of a few months and with the govWorks.com launch fast approaching, reality bites. Psychobabble and group-bonding sessions cannot conceal the fact that the govWorks.com site is fundamentally broken.

With the competition marching ahead and further financing drying up, relations between Tom and Kaleil sour until, finally, Kaleil is forced to dismiss his friend and have him escorted off the premises. But Kaleil's final, desperate efforts to save the business come to naught and govWorks.com is bought up.

The filmmakers' fly-on-the-wall approach, letting Tom and Kaleil go about their business without asking questions or intervening, works well as far as telling their story goes.

Audiences are likely to warm more to Tom than Kaliel, whose supreme self-confidence is likely to rub many up the wrong way. Even so, it's hard to watch govWorks.com go belly up without experiencing feelings of schadenfreude towards both men, especially after witnessing them edge out their silent partner early in the film. (Ironically he's probably the one who received the best return on his original investment.)

In other respects Startup.com is less illuminating. We never find out what the rank and file employees or the investors really think of govWorks.com and its bosses or how far govWorks.com is a representative example. And, with Tom's daughter being introduced early on but no mention ever being made of her mother, one senses a strong public/private boundary that the filmmakers were not permitted to cross.

But, these weaknesses aside, Startup.com is essential, entertaining viewing for anyone interested in the dot bomb phenomenon.