Reviews

How can a movie that features the singing of Curtis Mayfield be bad? It can't! The Groove Tube is a series of scatological black-out sketches that makes fun of anything from 2001 to the olympics. The highs, (Koko the clown, the easy lube recipe) outnumber the lows (an all too long "The Dealers"), but even the lows are funny. Best of all is Ken Shapiro's manic dance down a busy Manhattan sidewalk.(That is Shapiro, not Nat King Cole singing Just You, Just Me). Definitely dated now, but at the time The Groove Tube was irreverent, bold, shameless and hysterically funny. Ken Shapiro made this minor cult hit, then 7 years later made the Christmas day opening bomb, Modern Problems (though I enjoyed it} and since then, unfortunately, nothing.(He could possibly be playing drums in a jazz group) The Groove Tube remains to me an unending burst of positive energy, a movie that 26 years after my initial viewing, still brings me real joy!

An amazing sleeper, one that you will appreciate more with each viewing (if you can find it). George Segal and the amazing Elliot Gould perfectly portray the ups and downs, the manic lifestyle that masks the unhappiness of the degenerate gambler. The energy pours off the screen in a series of seemingly free-lanced scenes. You will always remember the poker games, the basketball con, the racetrack and casinos. But most memorable are all the wonderful minor characters; the girlfriends, the bookmaker and even a thief. Most unforgettable to me are Barbara Ruick as the Reno poker game barmaid and Phyllis Shotwell as the quintessential Vegas lounge act. A movie with nonstop action filled with humor and sadness, affection and apathy, all the way to its unrelenting end!