Wassup Rockers (2006): C

Different movie, same story for Larry Clark, whose awesomely titled Wassup Rockers proves to be yet another of the directors’ portraits of rebellious, sexualized teen-dom that’s more concerned with ogling than with understanding its horny under-21 protagonists. This time around focusing on South Central Salvadorian skate kids, Clark vacillates between Kids rowdiness and Ken Park lasciviousness with his latest act of cinematic provocation, spending countless early close-ups on his shaggy-haired adolescents’ tight jeans-ensconced crotches and shirtless bodies (replete with an in-your-face image of a lone nipple hair) before shifting focus to their journey into the foreign wilds of Beverly Hills, where sex and murder lace their devil-may-care day’s good times. While his non-professional cast radiates scraggly charm, the film itself is snake oil through and through, from its phony punk rock swagger to its parade of laughable (or offensive, depending on your disposition) stereotypes: a racist white cop; a predatory gay party host; slutty mini-Paris Hiltons and their violently preppie boyfriends; a murderous Sam Peckinpah (or Clint Eastwood?) stand-in; and kind Hispanic maids who, in the finale, team up to form some sort of modern Underground Railroad to help the Latino kids escape rich white suburbia. Any interest in probing the minority experience of living on the fringe, however, is subsumed by Clark’s attempts to romanticize his hardcore punks, and ultimately undone by his desire to transform the (initially sociological) proceedings into a farcical, 90210 version of The Warriors.