`Groove’ characters lost amid rave culture

In theaters

GROOVE. Rated R, 86 minutes, written and directed by Greg Harrison. Now playing, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

With its infectious soundtrack, thrill-seeking characters and thin, Ecstasy-fueled script, Greg Harrison’s “Groove” isn’t interested in spinning a good story. It’s interested in capturing the essence of attending a rave — which, in this case, features hundreds of stoned kids twirling about on a makeshift dance floor while the tiny melodramas of their lives slam into them like anvils.

Unlike the recent angst-ridden films “Loser” and “The In Crowd,” “Groove” puts a different face to Generation Y, exposing them not as an angry, disenfranchised lot lacking in love or evil to the core, but as euphoric, happy-go-lucky drug users who love to love each other, baby — especially while tripping on a dance floor.

In making the film, Harrison says his intention “was to evoke the community found in the subculture of raves. I was also interested in exploring the ambiguous morality surrounding relationships and drug use as well as the universal desire of people to belong and feel connected, however successful or unsuccessful each person’s attempt is.”

Harrison himself is only modestly successful in pulling this off.

His film’s opening, set to a driving techno score, begins with an anonymous group of techno-savvy twentysomethings logging onto computers and hopping into chatrooms to spread the word about the latest rave, which is set to take place illegally at an abandoned warehouse in San Francisco.

It’s the most interesting part of the movie, a crisply edited 15 minutes that provide insight into the sheer skill and daring it takes to organize one of these events.

The characters, however, are about as interesting as anything on “The Lawrence Welk Show”; they’re meaningless to Harrison and to us. As likable as some of these club kids are, most are vapid and none ever rises above stereotype. Harrison is too content to use them as movable set pieces that occasionally O.D.

There’s David (the horrible Hamish Linklater), a tense, lonely writer of PC manuals who predictably loosens up and comes into his own at the rave; there’s Leyla Heydel (Lola Glaudini), a bright, knowing New Yorker who helps David through his first trip on Ecstasy; and David’s brother Colin (Denny Kirwood), who proposes to his girlfriend, Harmony (Mackenzie Firgens), on the very night he also decides to make out with a man.

To those who frolicked in the drug culture of ’60s, ’70 and even ’80s, much of this will seem pretty benign, tame stuff, but the film nevertheless has merit as a cult feature and does, at the very least, offer its intended audience of present and past clubbers an ending some should immediately identify with.

Indeed, as the ravers come slipping out of the warehouse and into the dawn with their jaws clenched from popping too many drugs, their makeup smeared and clothes rumpled from too much sex, their glassy eyes wincing into the sunlight, an embarrassing truth is once again proved true: There’s nothing quite like nighttime glamour in a daytime world.

Grade: B-

JESUS’ SON. 110 minutes, R, directed by Alison Maclean, written by Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, Oren Moverman. Based on the book of short stories by Denis Johnson. Now playing, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Since this is a family newspaper, there’s no way I can tell you the name of the main character in Alison Maclean’s first American film, “Jesus’ Son,” so we’ll leave it at this: His initials are FH — the H stands for Head. The F stands for a word that punctuates every lousy, self-destructive, moronic thing he’s ever done to screw up his life.

FH, played brilliantly by Billy Crudup, is a sweet, likable junkie who destroys everything he touches. Caught in a continuous, drug-induced haze, he’s a hapless bit of bad luck who blows through the nightmare of his life in a giddy, semi-conscious state that sometimes gives itself over to moments of brilliant clarity, as witnessed in an early scene where he leaps out of a truck to whirl about in a field: “Ah, this sudden crispness, this beautiful chill, the tang of everything stabbing me!”

The way Crudup plays him, FH comes off as an innocent, a lumbering dolt who seems as astonished as we are by the grave mistakes he keeps making in his life.

Based on — and faithful to — Denis Johnson’s acclaimed, 1992 collection of short stories, “Jesus’ Son” is a road movie told in flashback that covers five years in FH’s life during the early 1970s.

At times hilarious and other times disturbing, it fractures time just as neatly as Johnson does in his stories, while also sustaining a similar staccato rhythm. The overall effect is a film that jumps nicely from landmark event to landmark event in ways that suggests the chemical-induced holes in FH’s memory will never be filled.

And yet none of this plays out like a tragedy; it’s more hopeful than that. At its core, it’s about FH’s relationships, the most important of which centers around his junkie girlfriend, Michelle (Samantha Morton, once again perfect), a casualty of the times who’s more afloat than FH — and far more weak.

With Holly Hunter, Denis Leary, Jack Black and Dennis Hopper in strong supporting roles, “Jesus’ Son” could have used some trimming toward the end, but that’s nit-picking. In its quest to explore and discover FH’s spiritual reawakening, this film mounts an unforgettable experience.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, and Tuesday and Thursday on NEWS CENTER at 5:30 and NEWS CENTER at 11.

THE VIDEO CORNER

Renting a video? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Romeo Must Die — C- Whatever It Takes — B The Beach — D+ Drowning Mona — C- Magnolia — A- Angela’s Ashes — B- The Ninth Gate — C+ Ride with the Devil — C- What Planet Are You From? — D The Whole Nine Yards — B+ All About My Mother — A Down to You — D The Hurricane — A- My Dog Skip — B+ Scream 3 — B- Hanging Up — F The Talented Mr. Ripley — A Scream 3 — B- Anna and the King — A- Sweet and Lowdown — A- Topsy-Turvy — A Bicentennial Man — D+ Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo — C- The Emperor and the Assassin — B- The Green Mile — A