RAVE

For a movie less than 90 minutes long, this Rave still goes on too long.

The rave subculture is one that has yet to be enshrined successfully in filmdom. There was an honest attempt a fews years back with the movie Groove that was famously backed by high-tech investors in the San Francisco area. That movie had an excellent soundtrack, but a lame-o plot involving an office drone (among others) finding himself through the mind-opening experience of an all-night party. Basically it was as much fun as watching someone else get high and all huggy on you for two hours while you remained stone-cold sober.

Rave, it seems, was released around the same time as Groove, but probably never made it past the film fest circuit. My guess it that it is only now being released to DVD because of the curiosity factor—one of the supporting characters is played by Efren Ramirez, best known now as Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite (gosh!). This film is neither better nor worse than its peer, but that isn't saying much.

We could call Rave, Crash 2000. Young adults from various wakes of life in the Los Angeles area swirl around each other, all ending up at the same rave party. The evening builds and builds until the characters crash together, with various tragedies ensuing. This isn't a bad idea, and some parts of the film are done well. We meet each of the main six characters in candid "talking heads" interviews. They are male and female; straight and gay; white, Korean, and Mexican. They are all angst-ridden, mostly lashing out at their parents Who Don't Understand. The rave is where they can all meet on equal terms. Kids that normally shout racial epithets at each other out on the street all gather together in the harmony of house beats, dancing, drugs, and hugging (of course). You know that with the introduction of a live-wire thug with a gun that someone is not going to make it through the night. Viewers can instantly start placing bets right from the start.

The young actors cannot be blamed for the overall predictability of Rave. Across the board, they are all quite good, especially Douglas Spain as Daffy, the good kid from a bad neighborhood, and Aimee Graham as Mary, the wallowing suburban white girl druggie. But the rambling script brings them all down. For a movie called Rave, the dance itself only occupies the middle third of the film. The ending drags on and on, and gives the actors who play the parents a fine opportunity to bring it all down to the level of eyeball-rolling overacting. (Credit goes to Steven Bauer to almost saving the parents' reputation in the film, despite the fact that I kept picturing him as the Anne Heche's rapist in Wild Side). The house beats make way for sensitive guitar-laded songs that explain the emotions, and there's lots of staring off into the distance contemplation by the characters. As it is, for a movie less than 90 minutes long, this Rave still goes on too long.