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Wassup Rockers (2006)
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Reviews Counted:22
Fresh:10
Rotten:12
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: As usual with Clark's films, the fixation on kids is rather creepy, plus the plot eventually runs off the rails into camp.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for pervasive language, some violence, sexual content and teen drinking
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:2006
Box Office: $142,786
Synopsis: In 1995, photographer Larry Clark burst onto the indie scene with the controversial KIDS, a tough, realistic look at a group of teenagers hanging around the seamier side of New York City, getting... In 1995, photographer Larry Clark burst onto the indie scene with the controversial KIDS, a tough, realistic look at a group of teenagers hanging around the seamier side of New York City, getting involved in sex and drugs amid the AIDS crisis. A decade later, Clark (BULLY, KEN PARK) went across the country to make WASSUP ROCKERS, about a group of Latino teenagers experimenting with sex, playing and listening to punk rock, dressing in their own style, and looking for the perfect place to skateboard. The seven teens, led by Jonathan (Jonathan Velasquez), take two buses to get to Beverly Hills High, where they start boarding down difficult steps. They are excited when two white students, Jade (Laura Cellner) and Nikki (Jessica Steinbaum), invite them to their house, but they are soon on the run after being harassed by a racist cop (Chris Neville). They make it to the huge house, but they have to take off again when Jade and Nikki's rich white male friends catch them there, sending them off on a perilous journey through ritzy Beverly Hills as they try to get back to South Central--what one of them proudly calls the Ghetto. No matter how hard the kids try, they are unable to avoid violence; it is too entrenched in their dangerous world. In this gritty urban drama of class conflict, racism, and boys just trying to be boys, Clark displays how deep the ills of society still go, all set to a raging punk soundtrack featuring songs by such bands as South Central Riot Squad, the Remains, Moral Decay, and the Retaliators. [More]
Starring: Yunior Usualdo Panameno, Carlos Ramirez, Jonathan Velasquez, Milton Velasquez
Starring: Yunior Usualdo Panameno, Carlos Ramirez, Jonathan Velasquez, Milton Velasquez, Iris Zelaya, Ashley Maldonado, Luis Rojas Salgado, Laura Cellner, Eddie Velasquez, Jessica Steinbaum, Francisco Pedrasa
Director: Larry Clark
Director: Larry Clark
Screenwriter: Larry Clark
Producer: Larry Clark, Terry Spazek, Ramon Salgado, Henry Winterstern, Kevin Turen, Patrick Meehan
Studio: First Look
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Reviews for Wassup Rockers
Makes you wish Clark had quit trying to cook up adventures for his cast and made a straight documentary instead.
Tries to say something profound about these kids, while oversimplifying the world around them to the point of ridiculousness.
Steeped in urban-youth woes but gets a bounce from Clark's sense of humor and hope.
The main characters may be refreshingly cliché-free, but almost everyone they meet in Beverly Hills is a stilted cartoon.
What might have been a fascinating, intimate portrait turns into something much less compelling when Clark tries to impose a sex-and-action-packed narrative on the proceedings.
The sexy, scruffy, neo-Warriors pageantry of ghetto teen hunger would have been a lot more vital if Clark didn't have such a class-war chip on his shoulder.
The first half is a striking piece of photojournalism with little dramatic interest, and the second half is a highly contrived narrative that forfeits any claim to realism.
[Clark's] films may be the only truthful ones about some aspects of American adolescence, however we might wish that were not so.
Very different than Kids. Where the earlier film was exhausting in its nihilism, the latest retains a good-natured charm.
We learn little about who they are beyond who Clark needs them to be: Latino punks from the ghetto who like to skate.
The thought of a middle-aged man lurking around a bunch of kids is kind of creepy, but Clark shows some degree of self-awareness.
When a colleague told me I was about to see a new film from Larry Clark, the director of Bully and Kids, I said, 'I wonder how many scenes will pass before we get shirtless teenage boys?' That’s one of Clark’s rather disturbing obsessions.
Wassup Rockers evokes some of Clark's fetishistic quirks. But you get the feeling that this time around, he's giving his appealing core cast of amateur actors more room to be human.
Wassup Rockers could have been a spiky culture clash. When it tries to shock us with its alleged realism, though, it is entirely a bore.
Some moments of off-the-cuff beauty aren't enough to mask the creepy heart of Larry Clark's latest look at outcast kids.
More than a decade after Larry Clark scandalized the movie world with Kids, he is still pushing buttons with his lubricious insider's view of teenage life.
This portrait of young South Central Latino boys cutting a skateboarding swath through the ritzy environs of Beverly Hills is ultimately more laughable than illuminating, at times approaching a level of camp commensurate with John Waters.
Wassup Rockers is amateurish, but without the redeeming qualities found in Kids and Bully.
Latest News for Wassup Rockers
July 07, 2006:
Wassup, Larry Clark? Director Talks Teens and Breaking Bones
Photographer and director Larry Clark chatted with Rotten Tomatoes staffer Michael Campos-Quinn about his new film, "Wassup Rockers," which opens in limited release... More...
June 22, 2006:
Critical Consensus: "Click" Doesn't, Ahem, Click; "Waist" Isn't Deep Enough
This week at the movies, we've got a magical remote control ("Click") and a father who's trying to rescue his son ("Waist Deep"). Will the critics dig... More...
June 21, 2006:
Exclusive: "Wassup Rockers" Clip
We got our hands on an exclusive clip from Larry Clark's "Wassup Rockers" that shows the main characters rocking out in an impromtu performance. The movie centers on a... More...
April 25, 2006:
Photo Gallery Update: "Stick It," "Wassup Rockers," and "The Proposition"
They're not exactly blockbusters but we couldn't resist sharing the new photo galleries for "Stick It," "Wassup Rockers" and "The Proposition." More...
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