GROUPIES

Groupies is a look at the women (and a couple of men) who sleep with rock stars for the fame and notoriety it brings them. Supposedly Cinema Verite, the movie is really just a bunch of poorly edited footage that is extremely hard to watch. 

There are some musical performances interspersed throughout the film: Spooky Tooth rehearsing at The Fillmore, Joe Cocker and The Grease Band playing "Delta Lady", Ten Years After performing "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Help Me Baby", Dry Creek Road doing "Mister Sun", and Terry Reid with two songs "Superlungs" (back of dvd labels this mistakenly as "Supertones") and performing what I thought was the best song in the movie, "Bang Bang".

As with any type of reality filming, the groupies play to the camera, not really giving you a true look at who they are, but only a look at who they want you to think they are. The sound is so bad that many times it was hard to even hear/understand what the groupies were spouting off about. The only reason I can see to watch Groupies is to see the musical performances, the rest of the movie, in my opinion is a waste of time.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Across The Universe incorporates 34 Beatles' songs into the storyline. Some of the song lyrics are added for plot continuation and some are added as production numbers. Both serve their usefulness in telling the love story of Jude and Lucy.

There are only two musicians of note in Across The Universe - Joe Cocker and Bono. Joe Cocker, in one of my favorite parts of the film, plays three parts (a bum, an old hippie, and a pimp) during the song "Come Together". Bono, not one of my favorite people to begin with, comes off quite favorably in this movie in the part of acid purveyor Dr. Robert.

When I was in the sixth grade, we would take the top 40 list from the local radio station (WQOK) and weave the song titles into a story (For example "Goodbye Cruel World", I'm a "Lonely Teenager" who is going "North To Alaska".....). Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm so fond of Across The Universe, it reminds me of my youth. Of course, Across The Universe is much more sophisticated in its approach to using The Beatles' songs in the movie. There are also lots of references to other characters/events  relating to the history of The Beatles. If, like me, you're a Beatles fan or just like a good musical production, you'll enjoy this movie and I highly recommend it to anyone who falls into either category. I've already watched the film twice and will probably watch it again in the future.