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Wassup Rockers

2006, Movie, R, 111 mins

Wassup Rockers: Review

WASSUP ROCKERS
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Photographer-turned-filmmaker Larry Clark's unhealthy preoccupation with kids young enough to be his grandchildren is only part of what's wrong with this leering attempt to capture the raw energy of an L.A. subculture: Nonprofessional actors and Clark's nonprofessional direction deliver the death blow. The kids are a posse of Central American immigrant adolescents who now call South Central home; rather than copping the hip-hop style and attitude of their black peers, they're die-hard skate punks. Fourteen-year-old Jonathan Velasquez (Jonathan Velasquez), Kico (Francisco Pedrasa) and their five friends prefer tight jeans (something Clark seems to really appreciate) and black T-shirts to baggy pants and basketball jerseys, and wear their hair in an overgrown mop-top a la Joey Ramone; instead of West Coast hip-hop, they listen to California thrash. At school they're derisively called "rockers," and their refusal to conform makes them targets in an already dangerous neighborhood; their friend Arturo was recently killed in a drive-by shooting. One afternoon, they decide to feed their craving for skateboarding by taking the bus to Beverly Hills High (they first try driving, but their car is impounded when a traffic cop realizes none of them has a license) where they plan to skate the storied "9 steps" — a concrete stairwell that's a favorite site among skaters. They catch the eyes of both a pair of adventurous Benedict Canyon blondes, who invite them to their parents' palatial McMansion, and a racist cop who wants to know why they're so far from "where they belong." To avoid arrest, the kids bolt and wind up tripping through a rabbit hole that leads them deep into the rarefied world of Beverly Hills, a wonderland as dangerous as South Central. Dropping a group of scruffy Latino punks into one of the richest neighborhoods in the U.S. sounds like a pretty good idea, particularly if the characters and their misadventures are based on the real lives of the nonprofessional cast. But the simple, unavoidable fact is that these kids can't act; their unpolished screen presence is charming for a while, but becomes a liability when they're required to react to such serious events as a friend's death. Ironically, the neighborhood is full of loathsome lechers, including a fey photographer who really wants Jonathan to model for him. Adding horror to hypocrisy, self-proclaimed-supermodel-turned-reality-show-car-wreck Janice Dickinson plays a (conveniently) drunken Hollywood actress who electrocutes herself in her bathtub. It's hard to believe this shoddy, dishonest mess is Clark's sixth feature film (his fifth, 2002's KEN PARK was never theatrically released in the U.S.), and not the unpromising debut of a rank amateur. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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