XOXO

Dance music is kind of difficult to capture in film. Even portraying dance music in a pop show on television never really works, because outside of a rave club, watching dance music is a bit boring.

Director Christopher Louie in XOXO has gone with a Robert Altman route of six mainly young strangers colliding on the way to and during a rave festival.

Graham Phillips has the main role as he plays DJ Ethan a YouTuber who with the help of his friend and manager Tariq gets to DJ at the festival. However he does not have the necessary passes and the equipment he uses is not compatible with that of the festival. Tariq is unavailable as he gets lost in a drug haze as he has been inadvertently spiked. There is an older clubber who seems to be bitter about something and past business relationships. There is a beautiful young girl who is planning to hook up with someone and a young couple who give their tickets away and then trying to gain entry into the rave. There is a hotshot DJ who leeches the work of younger talent.

It is all shown in bright vibrant colours with lots of young beautiful women and plenty of texting. The music was supervised by Pete Tong and after a shaky opening when you might wonder if this film is for you, it actually settles down pretty well.

XOXO is the perfect film for the millennials. It's vibrant, colorful and passionate. I really enjoy this film and personally I think it's because it speaks to the younger self in me that's wishing I could party at a music festival but now at my age I don't know if I have the energy to do it.

Written by Dylan Meyer and directed by Christopher Louie, XOXO is essentially about six early 20-something strangers at the biggest EDM festival in America and their lives collide in one dream-chasing hopelessly romantic night. Graham Phillips plays DJ Ethan who gets to perform at the festival, he finally gets his big break, but situations leading up to that are quite rocky, plus his manager is going through his own separate ordeal. This is one of those ensemble films, meaning it features several key characters and all of them have equal share of screen time and you see their respective stories cross paths with each other.

First of all, I think any of you who've been to a festival before can certainly watch XOXO and plainly see the lengths to which this film went in order to accurately depict such event down pat. And once the sun goes down, the place is jumping with all kinds of folks, some are even there to just get high on drugs. It's basically a mini woodstock but with ten times the energy. The emphasis on the lighting, the wardrobe, all kinds of colors, the way the characters' lips or eyelids just glow in the dark, XOXO sure wants you to know that you are in for a party film where everybody is just there to live in the moment. The film features some of today's young talents and rising stars who are just right for their roles whether it be to captivate or inspire. At the heart of the story is this struggle or a conflict between following regular norm or hoping for something different like pursuing your passion or pursuing romantic encounter, as silly as that may sound to people, which is why I said earlier that this is the perfect film for millennials because we are the generation of not knowing what the future holds for us, we are the generation of taking chances and hoping for something more to come around. For all intents and purposes, XOXO is here to tell us that despite uncertainty and anxiety, somehow everything's going to be OK.

-- Rama's Screen --

This film tells the story of an aspiring DJ who plays for the first time in a major festival.

I love EDM to bits, and I have been looking forward to this film for a long time. The music is great, and the festival looks like what I imagine it to be. However, the story spends too much time meandering the back story before the festival. The characters are not that interesting either. I was quite bored in the first half, but the film did get better when the electronic music kicks in.

Being a young guy (22) I can relate very closely to this film. Since turning 18, I've had my far share of raves, and while watching XOXO, it made me want to get off my feet, go party, and have a good time. But looking at it from a film perspective, it felt like there was too much going on between the many different characters that all led up to a very minimal pay-off. Two characters specifically, the boyfriend and girlfriend, I felt could've been cut from the film entirely. They really didn't have much to do with the plot as a whole, and the creators could've used that to build more on the more centralized plot. The film had great acting and a good idea, but I personally felt that there could've been more. 5/10

I seem to be finding rather mixed reviews about this movie everywhere and I just felt it necessary to write my own review.

First off, the movie itself has so many flaws that it's nearly impossible to take seriously. I really wanted to like this movie, as I do have an interest in Hayley Kiyoko and Sarah Hyland, and because I love other movies with similar aesthetics (Spring Breakers, for example) but I guess they could only work with what they had. I don't understand why either of them would stoop to this level of garbage, but sure enough they did. Money is more important than substance.

The writing. The writing is so god awful that it's almost painful to watch it play out on- screen. The acting was obviously not top-notch but I blame that mostly on the terrible script itself. The characters were stereotypical and had very little redeeming qualities, not to mention they were so thinly written that you could care less about what happens to any of them. The story itself was also bad; nothing that exciting happened throughout the entire film and there were so many moments that randomly turned into an entirely aesthetic-fueled music video. In addition, the script seemed to find it very difficult to find any balance between negative and positive exploitation of the EDM festival scene. I constantly kept asking myself, "Is this trying to mock festival goers or is it trying to embrace them?"

The only redeeming qualities about this movie was the music (as an EDM fan, I did appreciate the soundtrack choices). The only other thing I would say was moderately decent was the visuals. Many of the visuals were well-done while some were very cheesy, so it was a mixed bag in that department. I was looking forward to this movie and was extremely disappointed because they could have done so much more with the story. Overall, I would not recommend this movie unless you simply want to watch it for the aesthetics, visuals and music. Do NOT expect a good story going into it and you may end up liking it more than I did.