Krush Groove

A perennial problem with music-oriented movies is that the excitement of a live performance so seldom translates successsfully to the screen, and rap is no exception. There are plenty of big names involved in Krush Groove, but the music alone isn`t able to carry the film, and the plot certainly can`t.

Except for The Fat Boys, who have some deft comic passes, nobody is required to act, or seems capable of it. But for what Krush Groove is - an unambitious film directed at a black teenage audience - it has its good points. [26 Nov 1985]

But this is a Grade A stop-me-if-you've-heard-this-one-before plot.

Not much acting is on display, the dialog is simplistic, the story is superficial, and the direction is faceless, but true fans won't care. Others have been warned.

Unfortunately, the skimpy screenplay by Ralph Farquhar insists upon entangling the performers in the most conventional subplots imaginable. Talent contests, feeble attempts at romance and the travails of a struggling young record company are all enlisted, however briefly, in the effort to drum up backstage activities for the players, who are best watched in performance anyhow. Rap music is infinitely more original than these creaky devices, and it deserves something better.

Krush Groove is a kind of "Purple Drizzle," partly because of the story, which is scattershot; mostly because of the music, which isn't music at all, but rap, that tired fad of worn-out rock critics. [1 Nov 1985, p.B4]