Change Your Image
andrew_wilbur
Reviews
Groove (2000)
Hysterically awful - 3 stars for unintentional comedy value
Unlikable wooden characters deliver poorly scripted lines at an unrealistic warehouse party. Hilarity ensues. Yes, Harrison may have tried to encapsulate the rave scene in meticulous detail, but anyone who thinks he's actually succeeded in this is overlooking the most glaringly obvious element of fantasy in the whole film: John "£3,000 per hour" Digweed playing at an illegal warehouse party for free? What a joke. Speaking of Mr. Digweed, did anyone else notice how uncomfortable he looked throughout the film, and how he couldn't keep a straight face when delivering his first cringeworthy line? Also uproarious - The pseudo-scientific 'jargon' released by the token 'smart guy' through which we are meant to be impressed with Harrison's erudition, and the painful 'literary' conversation that they have in the Chill Room, which amounts to nothing more than flagrant name dropping without a trace of substance to make it credible. Has Harrison even read Kerouac, Burroughs and Hemingway? Probably not, if Groove is a product of his love affair with the printed word.
You can imagine someone - even yourself, probably - being bludgeoned by narcotic stupidity and thinking it would be an awesome idea to make a movie in which each plot segment was defined by a different DJ set. But then the drugs would wear off and you'd feel embarrassed for conceiving an idea so excruciatingly prone to cliché. You wouldn't actually turn it into a film. But someone did.
You've got to see this. It is tremendously entertaining, but not in the way intended by the screenwriter/director. It's a veritable masterclass on transforming bad ideas into an embarrassingly dire product.