Groove (Special Edition)
Parties are not always as fun as they look like they should be. The distinction lies in the realm between watching people have fun and actually having fun. Case in point:Groove. Set in San Francisco over the course of one night, this is the story of a rave, plain and simple. Preparation includes inhabiting an empty warehouse, finding the power supply, and sending out coded invitations. The movie kicks in as the party does, when people start arriving and the DJs start spinning. There's a nice moment early on when a cop shows up asking for the owner of the building, who is then taken on a tour of "a new Internet start-up." It becomes even funnier when the cop turns out to be smarter and more compassionate than anyone would expect. Writer-director Greg Harrison does a smart thing by focusing the story on David, a novice who's never been to a rave before, which breaks the story out of what could have been the suffocatingly insular world of rave culture. Unknowingly dosed by someone (his brother?), David is adopted by Layla, an attractive but lonely East Coast transplant who has begun to regret her party lifestyle. Other characters include a guy who's just proposed to his girlfriend, a college teaching assistant selling his own manufactured drugs, a nefarious lothario, a DJ who gets to meet his idol, and a gay couple having trouble finding the party. If the characters turn out to be just character types, that's OK because the movie itself floats by on its own high-octane enthusiasm.Grooveis light and frothy entertainment with a beat you can dance to.--Andy Spletzer