Feels like a documentary...Looks like a skate video. Cinema.com

'Wassup Rockers'

Writer/producer Larry Clark is rocking the silver screen again, this time with Wassup Rockers, which comes off as a skate video cleverly disguised as the odyssey of seven punk-rocking Latino skater-kids from South Central crossing social and racial boundaries throughout L.A.

Wassup feels like a documentary, looks like a skate video, but sounds like fiction. The funny thing is it’s not really fiction. At least, not in the strictest sense of the word. Much of the script for Wassup was written straight from the Rockers’ true lives. The resulting story is a fragmentary reflection of South Central reality that rings truer than other skate films like last year’s nostalgic Lords of Dogtown.
 
The Rockers essentially play their real life personas in Wassup. They’re not actors, or at least they weren’t before Clark found them skating in a park one day. So they don’t act like actors in the film. They act like real people. Much of the dialogue wasn’t even scripted – just outlined. And they pull it off. Wassup doesn’t feel like an ad-libbed home video. It feels authentic. A little disjointed maybe, but authentic.
 
Wassup starts with real footage of the main character Jonathan, and his friends, being interviewed for the film during the initial casting process. Jonathan tells of his real life experiences including his adolescent sex-capades, how he and friends got into skating and punk music. They’re true-to-life stories then roughly form the premise of the rest of the film. And that’s what’s so interesting about Clark’s style of filmmaking. He grabs a chunk of reality and then sculpts it just enough to pass as cinema. While some view his work as sloppy, others view it as hands-off or passive filmmaking. He calls it stream of consciousness.
 
Our 15 year-old protagonist’s story begins when he and six of his closest skate friends take-off on a 24-hour skateboard journey out of the barrio and into Beverly Hills where they dodge racist cops, skate the famed Beverly Hills High Nine Steps, get picked up by young rich girls, taken into young rich girls’ bedrooms, chased out of young rich girls’ bedrooms by young rich girls’ boyfriends and through countless backyards – all of which leads them back home to the relative safety of the South Central ‘hood.
 
There’s almost a western frontier quality to Wassup that hearkens back to old Clint Eastwood flicks. It’s like these kids are blazing a new trail in a savage world. In fact, a Clint Eastwood look-alike shows up toward the end wielding a pistol and firing at the boys for trespassing. And as the seven noble skaters ride side-by-side fighting for the right to be individuals, righteous and free, you can’t help but remember scenes from the classic western The Magnificent Seven. You’ll also see many similarities to The Warriors, one of Clark’s favorite films, where gang members try to get home by traveling through other gangs’ territories one at a time.
 
Films about skaters usually cast them as social rebels steeped in some level of criminality. Wassup Rockers refreshes that stereotype a bit. In Wassup, the Rockers are still social rebels, but instead of rebelling against a system of relative order and justice they rebel against the survival-of-the-fittest system of the South Central ghetto. The black and Mexican homies in their neighborhood look at the Rockers as the freaks, even though they’re essentially good kids. They don’t do drugs. They don’t drink. But, while they do rebel against the gangsta lifestyle, they’re not looking to escape the ‘hood. They just want to be themselves, skate, rock the tight pants, and play punk music.
 
Wassup Rockers is not your typical teen flick. Larry Clark doesn’t make typical teen flicks. Anyone who has seen his 1996 film Kids knows that. So, if you’re looking for Final Destination 12, this ain’t it. But, if you’re looking for an engaging story about skaters in the ‘hood – with some pretty good skating in it, I might add – then keep your eyes peeled on theaters near you.

-Steve Lemig