Music Film Review - Groove (2000)
)I've been thinking of starting a series on here where I talk about movies from time to time and today will be the first entry of it. I'm not going to be using this to just do any movie review, my focus is going to be on movies centering around music or sound in general, particularly on movies focused on Electronic Music. There is a pretty big wealth of movies concerning the subject, but today I'm going to be focused on one of the first movies I can remember to attempt to tackle DJing and Rave culture: Groove.
Groove is a 2000 film from Greg Harrison who seems to have slipped into obscurity following his 2004 film November. The plot is concentrated around a night of partying in the Bay area and follows multiple characters and juggles multiple perceptions about the party spending time on all the different ways people are experiencing the night.
There are a few main plots to focus on in this film.
The actual throwing of the party and all the external forces at play in throwing an illegal party. From wiring up power to an abandoned warehouse to the threat of being shut down by the police. There is a constant sense of things going off the rails at any moment at play in the film, but while it tries to be faithful to the actual pressures of throwing a night like this, the stakes never feel quite real in the film. Still, it is a side of a night that people often take for granted which is the huge financial and liability risk that promoters take in putting together a night of DJing.
The other main plot concerns David Turner, played by Hamish Linklater who you may recognize from small roles in 42, Fantastic Four, and a pretty good role in the recent show Legion, as he goes through his first night at a rave accompanying his brother who plans to propose to his girlfriend at the party. He plays a slightly uptight writer who has his eyes opened up by the power of a great night out by, predictably, some chemical help. As he works through his first drug trip, he finds love in the form of The Sopranos' Lola Glaudini and a level of connection that had been missing from his life.
There is a lot more going on in the light hearted Magnolia styled interweaving of characters. A bad drug trip, a electronic music cynic who never quite has a good time, a drug induced bout of infidelity that ruins a relationship, and the struggles of an amateur DJ as he fails, and later succeeds at showing his talents. It is definitely one of those movies that will have you saying "where do I know them from?" during the movie. The Craft's Racheal True and a very unknown Nick Offerman show up in the film to my delight as both of them have pretty good screen presence.
The whole night cumulates in a performance by legendary DJ John Digweed and has the type of life affirming ending that one could expect from a movie like this while his hit song Heaven Scent blares out for a crowd giving a pretty fantastic taste of how unifying a good DJ can actually be. One other aspect I like about this film is the inclusion of other real life DJs like Forest Green, WishFM, Polywog, and Monty Luke (in a particularly funny scene where he can't play because his vinyl melted in the front seat of his car). One of my favorite parts of this movie is that it gives a real sense of how much music can move people and the power that a DJ has over an audience.
Funny story, much later in life I had to drive Monty Luke to an afterparty and they were talking about how much younger the DJ scene had gotten. I had to admit to him my first introduction to him was from this film when I was 15 and he constantly gave me shit for being a baby for the 20 minutes or so I had to drive him around. I really was back then.
The film hasn't aged particularly well with music that doesn't exactly feel timeless and a depiction of a scene that has aged into legitimacy in the past decade, but it is a fun if not particularly accurate snapshot of time gone by with enough in it to give a good laugh to aged veterans of the DJ scene. One thing I will give it credit for is how it attempted to show a wide berth of experiences. Some people have the time of their life while some people have their lives ruined. It's commitment to not showing just the glitzy highs but also the potential dangers lends a bit of depth to the movie as the characters defy clichés, but the juggling of too many characters makes some of this hit a little flat as you never get to spend too much time with any one story line to let what happened really hit.
Overall, watching this is a huge blast of nostalgia for me. I grew up in the country and films like this gave me a brief look at a scene that I wanted to be a part of when I got out of my small town. There is enough here to warrant a watch from party goes, but is easily skip able for others. Not a great film, but ambitious enough with fun performances to rate a watch from those in the DJ scene.