Critic Reviews

Circuitry plugs into the underground world of raves. The scene, complete with drugs and its own culture, is blissfully examined in a documentary that speaks the language of its youthful generation.

It's as slick as anything you might find on the Discovery Channel, and the snippets of 3-D computer animation are too cool for words.

Fascinating but repetitious, Better Living Through Circuitry nevertheless does a good job describing the scene.

In this floor-level view of the rave scene, director Jon Reiss keeps it pumping, humming, buzzing and spinning.

Succeeds in articulating the fluid values and constituent parts of the "culture" even as that culture's subjects are at best mildly articulate.

It's the content that makes this documentary fly. The documentary's only stumbling point is its dearth of historical context.

It's got a good beat, you can dance to it.

Intelligent and engaging, this documentary about rave culture overcomes the challenge inherent in its subject; rave's appeal is by nature nonanalytical and experiential, while documentary films play to the intellectual observer.

The movie is essentially pro-Ecstasy. No matter how much the D.J.'s may claim that their electronic sounds produce the euphoria of a good rave, the movie clearly implies that Ecstasy is the key that unlocks it all.

Questions loom heavily over this entertaining but not-too-deep film, making it more a commercial than real exploration.