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Larry Clark’s fifth movie is anything but a drama. The flick
is heavy in stereotypes, the dialogue is simplistic but very
telling and apparently unrehearsed and the acting is downright
horrible, but surprisingly, that makes it anything but a bad
movie. Wassup Rockers opens with a shot of Jonathan, a
Guatemalan punk skater, who by mumbling and stuttering (this is
a constant throughout the movie, as the character’s dialogue is
often barely audible) speaks in first person to the camera. The scene
is shot documentary style,
but the film then turns into conventional storytelling, shoving
us head first into two days in the lives of a group of Latino
skate punk rockers from LA’s South Central. There is Jonathan,
who’s got plenty of luck with the ladies, and then there is
Milton who goes by Spermball but hates the nick name and then
there is Kiko who’s got fucked-up teeth but has certain raw
allure with the opposite sex, maybe is that innocent look he
gives to the ladies. Then there are the rest, Porky, Eddie,
Louie and Carlos; each one gets his chance to speak his piece;
especially during the hysterical Beverly Hills cop detention
scene, where the kids slowly manage to take control of the
situation which culminates with one of them stealing the cop’s
sandwich and yelling ‘this sandwich tastes like my dick.’ Fuck,
Clark is no man of subtle messages; but that’s hardly the point.
Mostly known for the gritty cult classic Kids, Clark has
never really attempted to replicate the realistic debasing of
that movie. Sure, there are plenty of commonalities in the
themes that his movies (the young living life like irresponsible
adults, the absence of parent-like figures, drugs, crime, and
suburbia as a sort of Babel-like place, among other themes)
cover but Bully was embellished with young Hollywood actors
which made for a dull experience and Ken Park, well no one saw
that one so it does not matter. Here Clark’s gone for a
minority group within a minority group within a minority group.
Focusing on a group of Latino teenagers, who are not only poor
but also seem misplaced because of their indifference to the black hip hop
world that society has attributed as closer to them; he manages
to immerse the spectator in a world where these character’s only
comfort lies in momentary escapism; namely skating, girls and
punk rock.
Wassup Rockers is very upfront with its characters and the
role that race and status (social and economic) plays in their
daily life. It does not take more than 15 minutes until we
have already seen two racial altercations between the characters
and African Americans; in the first they are called ‘Mexicans’,
which is the most obvious assumption that a non-Latin American
makes of any brown-skinned individual, and on the other they are
targeted because of their ‘tight’ pants, which spawns the
provocative question; ‘wassup rockers?’ The movie is
also upfront with its motives; the plot is thin, the direction
is loose, and the script at times borders on Troma-like (in one
poignant scene a rich drunken middle-aged lady is giving
the baby-faced Kiko a bath. When he gets out, she falls on the tub
and in an attempt to get up gets a hold of a chandelier which falls on
the bathtub electrocuting her to death; have you ever seen a
fucking chandelier on top of a bath tub? Plus, what was the
point besides cheap laughs? Maybe she deserved to die just
because she was rich, white, shallow, drunk and is very likely
that she had some truculent intentions with our boy Kiko) and
the actors are clearly unprofessional, which might turn off
thousands. But Wassup Rockers breathes youthful joy and careless
enthusiasm, which eventually causes pain and even death, but
that’s what you get when you play out of your element. At
least that's what Clark seems to be telling us.
In Beverly Hills, the boys find a world that’s only a few
miles away, but that represents the exact opposite of their very
own South Central. It’s a white rich world and since they
aren’t white, nor rich besides the occasional adventure they
find nothing but rejection. The boys don’t like their town,
they don’t fit there because they are rockers, but only two bus
rides away in Beverly Hills they aren’t welcomed either. When
asked where they’re from, their quick reply is; ‘we’re from
the ghetto’, but the line is spewed with such speed and
certainty that it comes off as provocation, albeit their life is
a hard truth. From then on, events subtract members of their
group one by one, one event more violent than the other, it is
not until the end when the boys seem to reflect on the
consequences of such day that any trace of conscience becomes
evident. Perhaps one should come to this movie with lowered
expectations; much like the awesome soundtrack that accompanies
it (Moral Decay, The Retaliates, The Remains, The
Revolts-the band comprised by the actors for the movie) Wassup
Rockers thrives on its simplicity; the story is told and there
is very little in the way of artistic accomplishment, but being
this a Larry Clark movie, that was hardly the point.
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