There are two films lurking in the heart of “Wassup Rockers,” which arrives a decade after photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark first came to notoriety in the movie world with the sexually explicit teen picture “Kids.” Here, Clark turns his voyeuristic lens on a group of Latino teenagers who live in South Central Los Angeles, play in punk bands, wear their hair long and love to skateboard. As is his cinematic practice, Clark spent a year with the boys who play themselves in “Wassup Rockers,” and much of the film has the anthropological authenticity such immersion affords. (See Film Notes on Page 34.) But 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. On a day trip to Beverly Hills, the guys are seduced by two upper-class girls, cocktailing fashionistas and an alcoholic actress (Janice Dickinson) in dizzying succession.
The themes Clark putatively tries to address in “Wassup Rockers” have been explored more convincingly in the documentary “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” as well as such fiction features as “crazy/beautiful” and “Thirteen.” What new take he has to offer resides mostly in his own leering gaze, which reduces his young subjects to run-of-the-mill sex objects.