Wassup Rockers: Critic Reviews

Hollywood has long stereotyped Latino teens as violent, gangbanging thugs steeped in drugs and misogyny. Wassup Rockers is a welcome and different portrayal of Latino teenagers in America.

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.

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.

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 main characters may be refreshingly cliche-free, but almost everyone they meet in Beverly Hills is a stilted cartoon.

Larry Clark's latest finds the grizzled shock-meister in a thoughtful mode and a mellow mood.

Some moments of off-the-cuff beauty aren't enough to mask the creepy heart of Larry Clark's latest look at outcast kids.

Steeped in urban-youth woes but gets a bounce from Clark's sense of humor and hope.

[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.

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.

This rollicking day in the life of a band of skateboarding Latino punk-rockers doesn't exude the voyeuristic smarm of previous Clark forays.

Makes you wish Clark had quit trying to cook up adventures for his cast and made a straight documentary instead.

A thoroughly winning and unexpectedly observant lark.

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.

Wassup Rockers is amateurish, but without the redeeming qualities found in Kids and Bully.

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.

We learn little about who they are beyond who Clark needs them to be: Latino punks from the ghetto who like to skate.

Boredom is the loftiest running theme in Larry Clark's films, and "Wassup Rockers" (imagine asking to buy a ticket for that title) takes dullness to a new low.

The themes are set up and then completely pushed into the background in exchange for almost endless dribble that feels more like a first time attempt of a film student rather than an actual film...

It was hard to keep awake during all the tedium.

...a sharply observed look at juvenile rebellion