It is a performances centric movie

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Overall this was a good to great film. There were some laugh-out-loud moments, a lot of very weird and creepy ones, and a few sad ones. People who are okay with the eccentricity of the Bay Area will probably like this film the most, whereas viewers from "Middle America" (as discussed in the film) will probably be offended by the bible-bashing liberals with alternative sex lives that populate the area and thus are the main subjects. As for the stories, they were really hit or miss. Some of the people interviewed were hilarious, like the two ambiguously gay roommates (I loved it when he asked, 'Want some milk?') and the 50 year old who still lived with his mom and was searching for a 270 pound woman (was he joking? was it serious? I still don't know). Some of the misses were people who just weren't very likable, like the girl who wanted to make money by marrying a gay guy, which just didn't make any sense. I would have liked to see something from the "Missed Connections" section.

I recently watched the documentary film '24 Hours on Craigslist' in San Francisco and I really enjoyed it. The film does a great job of tying together the nearly impossible: a random day of posts on Craigslist. This documentary is worth watching purely for the characters interviewed by the film. They are at times hilariously funny (some intentionally so) and provide a voyeuristic glimpse into who it is that drives the site's populist appeal: us.I doubt my 70 year old dad, who uses craigslist regularly, would relate to or understand most of the folks in the film. But that's not really the point. '24 Hours on Craigslist' it makes you question who uses the site if we only saw 88 stories? What were the other 99.5% of people posting on Craigslist like and how much stranger could they be? I will say that the rapid edits and amateurish shooting styles (different camera operators) make this indie documentary a little hard to watch at times but I definitely recommend this film.

This film was so poorly shot, I had a headache for 2 hours after. The storyline was abysmal at best...I mean, given the size of the community there has to be much more interesting content that could've been included. I also have a hard time believing it a true documentary, as some of the people interviewed were painfully acting their way through their "story". If there had been more stories like the couple that sold their stuff to travel around the world, it may have at least had content. But back to the shooting- over/underexposed and completely unsteady (I understand a style, this was not it). It might explain if all of the shooters were doing it for free from a CL listing in exchange for a credit. Although, if I had shot it and received credit, I would have used a pseudonym.

To make this documentary about the now legendary Internet classified ad service, Michael Gibson first assembled 8 separate video film crews he discovered through the San Francisco Bay Area Craigslist website listings. Then, lining them all up one morning (August 4, 2003, as it happened), he dispatched these teams to first contact Bay Area people advertising various services, products, needs and desires on Craigslist, and then to go out to visit and shoot interviews with the most promising or colorful contacts, all within a single 24 hour period. The accrued footage was then edited to make this film. It was a clever concept but the product falls flat. Most of the people interviewed are either boring or boorish. The editing is WAY too frenetic, WAY too chop chop.The film might have been far better if Gibson had lingered longer on a few carefully chosen, engaging, viewer friendly people. I did learn here that the number "420" is, like "Bob," a code for marijuana, but when I Googled "420 marijuana," I found 497,000 listings: I'm clearly the last person on earth to find out about this code. One fun thing I'd also never heard of is a phenomenon called "flash mob" games (708,000 listings on Google, sigh). Players find each other via Craigslist. Everyone who signs up then receives written instructions (by e-mail, I suppose) to gather at a certain place and time and then follow a precise, timed protocol for when and how to behave.This being San Francisco, I thought the game would involve nude romps through town, but no. In one game, a hundred or more people converge to fill the lobby of an upscale hotel, whereupon they first hug everyone else who's there like long lost amigos; then they all crash to the floor, flopping down upon one another in simulated sleep, like a narcoleptics convention. If only the rest of the film could have been this good. My rating: 4.5/10 (C). (Film seen on 09/30/05 at the Idaho International Film Festival) If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.