Gay Today: Entertainment

Groove

Film Review by Warren D. Adkins

So you want to go to a rave party, eh? Why not join the gay male couple trying desperately in Groove to find the location and just see if you can get in. This film's tribal meeting spa is in San Francisco, natch, but by now everybody knows that rave parties are just as likely to be found in Orlando, nearby, maybe, to the Southern Baptist Convention.

Vince Riverside and Denny Kirkwood star in Groove

In the 1960s someone who was grooving was, by definition, in a contemplative state of mind, usually drug-induced. The drugs, in those wonderfully wild days, were psychedelics and they were said to produce something akin to ecstasy. Today's drug of choice is simply named ecstasy and Groove is a millenium-era tribute to the antics of today's youths who are, shall we say, grooving 2000-style.

Here in the warehouse district, returning in all their glory, are the reincarnated ghosts of 1960s psychedelica. The psychedelic lights are once again flashing, there's trance-inducing music, and there are the same old hordes of people hugging, laughing, and signaling their approval of each other with high fives.

Is it all too much for you? Are you feeling overwrought? Then sit your posterior in the Chill Room and watch a horny couple make love. You have no comparable lover? Here, then, suck on this lollipop. Its so good, you'll hardly know the difference. Just watch. That's why you've come to this party, isn't it? You were curious, weren't you, about what its like to enjoy paradise on earth?

Ernie (Steve Van Wormer) is this rave party's likable St. Peter at the Gate. He makes sure that nobody gets into party heaven who doesn't belong and that those who may have dropped or drooped after too much fun are properly comforted. He also makes sure that only those who ingested this One True Drug are admitted. Heretical drugs—like cocaine—are excommunicated from the company of the blessed.

Ernie is proof positive that the year 2000 has given birth to a better organized, wiser, and more empathetic brand of drug king. He is, if the truth were told, responsible.

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Related Sites:
Groove: Official Site
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This fact alone is sufficient to make Southern Baptists rave too, but against, not for today's rave parties. It's for damn sure they won't like the wholesome portrayal in this film of wholesale trafficking in an illegal substance. And they definitely won't like the competition that ecstasy provides against their own sterile concept of heaven. Greg Harrison (who wrote and directed Groove) takes all true believers by the hand and leads them into a subculture that is, well, utopian.

The Love Boat couple in Groove --are the straight-laced David (Hamish Linklater) and the more worldly Leyla (Lola Glaudin) who's looking, in spite of her wild-woman appearance, for a husband. Under the influence of ecstasy, two who might never have found each other otherwise, do. Its all so contemporary.

Mackenzie Fergens in Groove

Greg Harrison says he may have been influenced in the making of Groove by the 70s film about the early 60s, American Graffiti. Perhaps. But he must surely see that the year 2000 enjoys—from a gay standpoint—an advantage. Girl doesn't always get boy, or vice-versa. In Groove, the perennial girl, temporarily separated from her would-be beau, finds him kissing a man. Sexual fluidity reigns again as it did when old-fashioned LSD eliminated unnatural inhibitions.

If you've never been to a rave party, Groove provides you an invitation. If you have, you can just kick back and decide for yourself if this entertaining film adds seasoning to a reality you've already tasted.