Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon Movie 9: A Midsummer Night's Rave (2002)

I’m now nine movies deep into the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon.  May is almost over.  It’s been interesting.  There were ups and downs, but I’ll talk about them in a later blog entry.  This one is about the ninth movie in the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon.  This one is about 2002’s A Midsummer Night’s Rave.

A Midsummer Night’s Rave is quite obviously based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The story is kind of complicated to even attempt to describe, so I’m going to go really vague.  There is a rave, and a bunch of 20 somethings take ecstasy and think over their relationship statuses.  It has people such as that one guy from The Fast and the Furious, that girl that was on the new Hawaii 5-0 for a while in the second season, that Shermonator guy from the American Pie movies, and that douchey guy from 10 Things I Hate About You.  That’s right...someone from 10 Things I Hate About You is also in this movie.  I found that slightly interesting.  There’s also one of the London twins, but I’m not sure if it was the drug addict one or the other one.  Whichever one was in Dazed and Confused, this was him.

I went into this movie expecting the worst and was pleasantly surprised when it ended up being a decent flick.  I’d say it was exactly what it wanted to be.  It was a Shakespeare play set in a rave.  It had some substance.  It didn’t feel hollow.  What more could you possibly do with it?

If there was one thing that was an obvious problem with A Midsummer Night’s Rave, it would be the ending.  Some story threads are left hanging, some tie up too nicely, and something happens that completely undermines the beginning.  It’s similar to...was it Annie Wilkes in Misery? I think so.  If not, someone correct me.  It’s similar to what Annie Wilkes said in Misery.  She watched one of those old serial movies and at the end the character was left in a predicament where they would surely die.  The next episode of the serial rewrote the ending so that the main character was safe.  That’s kind of what happens in A Midsummer Night’s Rave.  The beginning shows something saying that it will happen.  In the end, it doesn’t happen.  It undermines the beginning which presents it as a concrete happening.  That’s where I find my problem in this movie.

Other than that, I enjoyed watching the movie.  There’s something about it.  It’s something I can’t quite figure out.  The movie has that one indescribable trait that hooks me.  It might not be there for everyone.  Hell, it probably isn’t there for most people.  I could see myself being one of the few people that liked this movie.  That doesn’t remove the fact that I like this movie.

A Midsummer Night’s Rave is worth checking out, if only to see what you can possibly do with Shakespeare in a rave setting.  It’s below Go on my list of movies with raves, but far about Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave.  That doesn’t tell you much, but I can say that it’s a fact.

Moving onto the final film of the Reimagined Shakespeare Marathon, I have an adaptation of Hamlet that is about as Canadian as a movie can get.  It’s called Strange Brew.  If you don’t know this movie, you are a hoser.