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Wassup Rockers (2006)
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Movie Review by Jarrod
July 4th, 2006
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Larry Clark seems to have a Catholic priest's obsession for handsome young men, as they have appeared prominently in every one of his movies, most notably Bully with Nick Stahl, Brad Renfro, and Michael Pitt, all of them getting bang chicks and show off their bodies. Now, he does it again with 'Wassup Rockers', which focuses on seven Latino boys from South Central Los Angeles who decide to travel to Beverly Hills. They like skateboarding and punk rock, and they find themselves horribly out of place in the upscale world of arrogant, eccentric white folks.
They encounter a racist cop, a gun-crazy actor, an older woman looking for a boy toy, a gay pedophile who throws house parties, and two horny girls who invite them back to their mansion for a little hanky-panky. All of these characters are perhaps a bit insulting to whites in general, I was not personally offended, and actually found most of them to be funny, but since I criticize movies for promoting stereotypes, I must be fair and call out Clark on his portrayal of whites as being evil and deranged bigots.
Rich Brooks, who runs a lovely little site called White Alert, reviews movies that deal with racial issues, like Crash, but also with Jews, the Holocaust, gays, and World War II. Basically, he likes anything pro-white, and dislikes anything that he perceives as anti-white. Though he does like Match Point, by Woody Allen, whom he seems to despise, most likely because of Allen's religious/ethnic heritage. I wonder what he would think of this film, especially those two rich white girls who want to f*ck the Latinos. I suppose he would condemn that as race-mixing, intolerable to those of his ilk.
In any sense, 'Wassup Rockers' is clumsy, shallow, and amateurish, with the fresh-faced cast simply failing to do anything that resembles acting. Clark did more or less pull them off the streets and place them in his movie, and he most likely encouraged them to act as they normally would, and he followed with his camera, capturing that behavior. The punk rock music certainly does not help matters, as it blares in scene after scene, though it cannot distract us from anything, because nothing much happens. They basically just run around encountering oddballs, some of whom seemed like they were pulled out of a David Lynch film, but Clark cannot make any of these weirdos appealing or even that disturbing. The pedophile comes as close as any, but even he is not that repulsive. I suppose one could easily find real-world equivalents: the gunphile actor could be Charlton Heston, the horny girls could be the Hiltons, the older woman could be Demi Moore (who actually found her boy toy), the pedophile could be Michael Jackson. I drew these comparisons while watching the movie, because I really lost interest and needed to do something to occupy my time as I waited for the ending credits.
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