It's always disappointing when a documentary fails to live up to--or offer any new insight into--its chosen topic. Unfortunately, that's precisely what Arthur Dong's "Family Fundamentals" does. Dong's doc looks at four homosexuals in three families and details the parents' inability to accept their children's sexual orientation. In two cases, the families are deeply religious, view homosexuality as a sickness that can be cured, and encourage their kin to embrace methods such as shock or drug therapy in order to "turn" heterosexual. The other involves former U.S. Congressman Bob Dornan, an outspoken opponent of gay rights whose campaign manager and surrogate son came out in 1997.

While "Family Fundamentals" contains some fairly effective footage of the pain these outcasts endure, one of the film's main points--that the mothers and fathers are woefully misguided in their belief that homosexuality is evil and optional--is a no-brainer to anybody who has one. The film's antagonists (if that's what one chooses to call the anti-gay contingent) don't offer any new wrinkles to this rather obvious debate. (When one offers up a passage of the Bible to defend her position and has the naiveté to speak of how other people "twist" the good book's words for their own benefit, those who opt against letting a work of contradictory fiction rule their lives may shake their head and scoff.) Their sustained ignorance of and blindness to the biological truths of same-sex relations evokes little but disdain, seeing as they're willing to let their anachronistic beliefs estrange them from their own flesh and blood. It's like making a documentary about the Flat Earth Society. Who doesn't know these people are nuts? Certainly not those who would go to see a documentary in the first place.

Not only that, but there are snippets of more substantial topics that Dong overlooks. A close, detailed account of the "doctors" who claim they can cure the "disease" of homosexuality would have been especially interesting. Or a glimpse into the relationship between homosexuality and religion (one of the subjects explains how important it was for him to find out that Catholicism was once more accepting of homosexuality) or homosexuality and politics. Dong need not have focused his entire film on these subjects; running at a mere 75 minutes, "Family Fundamentals" certainly had some time to add information. Directed, produced and written by Arthur Dong. A Deep Focus release. Documentary. Unrated. Running time: 75 min.