As a documentary, this film isn't much. It just shows footage of people doing this clowning business and some short interviews during make up sessions or whatever. But it does portray the subject well.<br /><br />The subject is clowning and krumping, extreme forms of dance born from hip-hop, made famous by the Chemical Brothers video "Galvanize". What it looked to me is a hip-hop mime, with violent overtones. At first I thought "What the hell is that?" There were black people shaking every body part as violently as they can, throwing hands up and down, left and right, like monkeys touching a high voltage line. But then I got it. It was language, body language, and it was art, as each kid there brought his own message.<br /><br />Immediately the film started showing how this type of dance is keeping children off the streets, doing something positive, etc., etc. That dancing didn't look too positive to me. It expressed a lot of frustration and violence, but it sure beats shooting people, and I was shocked to see what the life for people in South L.A. is like, where the only other option of expression is joining a gang and hurting or killing people.<br /><br />But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The same thing was said of rap and hip-hop a time ago, and they all turned out to be easily hijacked by commercial interests or corrupted towards the "gangsta" side. And it's so easy. These people have no education, no money, they can be easily swayed either way, if someone puts resources into it.<br /><br />Bottom line: this is like a documentary about the rise of hip-hop or boogie before it, only it's about some other form of spontaneous urban expression. I don't think the film or the dance style are very special or well done, but they do show in one quick swoop the situation and subculture of these people and also their emotions, basically expressed in dancing. It's also pretty depressing, since it shows how desperate people lift their spirits through something that doesn't really does anything else for them. Like the music of the slaves. They were still slaves, only they could cope with it because they sang a lot.