GROOVE (Sony Classics) Starring: Lola Glaudini, Hamish Linklater, Denny Kirkwood, Mackenzie Firgens, Steve Van Wormer, Vince Riverside, Rachel True. Screenplay: Greg Harrison. Producers: Greg Harrison and Danielle Renfrew. Director: Greg Harrison. MPAA Rating: R (drug use, profanity, sexual situations) Running Time: 86 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
That uniquely fin-de-siecle phenomenon known as the "rave" gets its sociological moment in the sun in GROOVE, a film that will be more effective as cultural curiosity a few years hence than it is as a story today. Greg Harrison's episodic tale opens with a group of self-styled San Francisco party masters, led by Ernie (Steve Van Wormer), selecting an abandoned warehouse for the following night's party. Then the word goes out to email and pagers, bringing together a collection of characters for dancing into the wee hours. Colin (Denny Kirkwood) brings along his more straight-laced brother David (Hamish Linklater), who expects he'll want to leave early. Colin also brings along his girlfriend Harmony (Mackenzie Firgens), to whom he intends to propose, while David hooks up with recently transplanted New Yorker Leyla (Lola Glaudini). As the DJs spin on, so do their stories and several others spin along for 86 minutes.
That time is moderately well-spent as an introduction to the rave sub-culture. Harrison drops in a few bits of memorable lingo ("buying a vowel" for purchasing either acid or Ecstasy; "the nod" for the party-goer's acknowledgement of the party-thrower's success; "baked, not fried" for one fellow's expressed preference for marijuana over hallucinogens) to set the scene without stranding newcomers in the minutia. There's a funny scene in which a relatively inexperienced DJ (Bing Ching) shakes his head at the expertise of a pro, and another in which the uptight David assumes Leyla is offering him drugs when she's offering him earplugs. From the dance floor to the fruit-and-water-stocked "chill room," GROOVE re-creates its unique world as effectively as you could hope for.
Harrison then proceeds to populate that world with one unmemorable, uninvolving character after another. Most of the narrative is spent on David and Leyla, whose budding relationship is supposed to be the core of the film but feels like just another drug-fueled party scam. Worse still is the contrived drama in the relationship between Colin and Harmony, which takes a "hip," independent film sort of turn for the worse. There are other sub-plots, including the inability of a gay couple to find the party location, but they offer little to latch on to. The acting is servicable at best, the characterizations not even that. GROOVE is composed entirely of people doing the sort of thing one sees people do at raves, played with all the energy and commitment of people playing types -- you're the uncomfortable geek, you're the dealer, you're the party princess, and so on.
The issue isn't that GROOVE meanders along in its night-in-the-life way without trying to be particularly profound. DAZED AND CONFUSED and AMERICAN GRAFFITI were charming studies of its era's revellers, and no one much cared if an epiphany was to be found. Both of those films, however, had the benefit of a nostalgic distance, allowing both film-maker and audience to recognize the silliness inherent in youthful celebration. Greg Harrison is too serious about this milieu; he seems to be making the suggestion that kids really have found party nirvana this time, not like those goofy kids of the '60s, '70s and '80s. It's no wonder the characters are irrelevant; Harrison just needed bodies to jump up and down to the beat. His take on the rave scene, detailed though it may be, isn't DAZED AND CONFUSED for the '90s. It's THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY for the '90s.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 rave reviews: 5.
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