It is not really the movie itself I want to talk about. The movie itself is quite disappointing. Seems the Walt Disney actress took on a challenge to prove she was all nicely grown up, and bared her breasts, and I'm not complaining, only she should have done that in a better movie. Kind of like "the only thing HAVOC got going for it, is : you know that chick from THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA? Bares her breasts here." Psst! Little Suzy next door's favorite flick THE PRINCESS DIARIES, better not let little Suzy see this one! She'd be traumatized!The movie can only be fun if you're partial to gang-bangers and the lowlife hip-hop lifestyle. A girl like Anne Hathaway seems very obviously to have a brain that is too interconnected to fall for these dung-beetles. She is playing against type, and she fails miserably at it. Oddly enough, Bijou Philips, whom I like, make no mistake, fits in. She seems convincingly jaded enough, I suppose I'm trying to say. But I fail to see what any (white, privileged) girl would see in the cockroaches. Physical attraction? Aren't we guys always reminded in typical youth culture shows (90210, THE O.C.) that girls only go for the coolest guys? And girls tend to dress up as if they're going out to the prom every night of their lives. Why would they want to be with scumbag baboons? Stick with me and I'll reveal the answer!It's not because they find these miscreants attractive. Not even their own mothers could find hoodlums attractive. It's the thrill of danger. They get all excited about being SO OUT THERE and they get off on their own excitement. It is why Allison so earnestly explains everything with "we get so ****ing bored!"It is a sad state when the youth of a great nation, the greatest nation ever, is so corrupted by cheap influences. Be worried, White America, be very worried. Your borders were infiltrated from within, and you're going to sink, and there's nothing that Homeland Security can do. A cultural revolution has undermined the standards of decency. The communists have won. The devil's music indeed.I'm sorry but these are the thoughts racing through my mind watching this. I believe in the beautiful creation that is mankind as I used to know it, the all-American look of days now gone by, I do not like to see it thrown away.Wake up, decent America. For the sake of your daughters. And the beautiful fair-skinned babies they are no longer going to have once this world becomes a melting pot of mixed races.I repeat that the movie itself is mostly a bummer. It does evoke very strong feelings though, as you could hear.By the way, I'd bet all the dollars in the world Anne Hathaway couldn't have enjoyed filming this. I think she still shudders thinking back about it.

What an intense rush this movie was.. caught it on IFC the other night , and this one hits you like a ton of bricks, and keeps piling them on one after the other, a bunch of rich kids decide they are bored and get mixed up with the East L.A. Gangs,, Mexican Gangs,, the girls in this movie are totally trashy, they are constant drug users,, little troublemakers, who crave constant action,, they have sex with guys they shouldn't . it's just a total mess with these kids.. the movie stars Anne Hathaway,, and Bijou Phillips, both whom i thought did a pretty good job,, yeah this movie is bordering on an X rating in my opinion,, lot's of drug use,, frontal nudity,, rape scene... d.p. just to name a few,, not that i personally think there's anything wrong with it,, in the film there is a rival gang,, called PLC,, there a bunch of wiggers who try to be black, they seem so plastic it's really pathetic,, they say L.A. is the city of plastic angels so go figure,, although there's lot's in the movie for some to say oh it's disgusting and horrible,, i guarantee you one thing,, once you start watching,, you won't be able to turn you're head away from it.

Let me tell you, after sitting through it, I was going to come here and totally trash it. I was going to call it an abomination of film making, etc. But luckily I decided to see what other people thought and find out a little more about the director/story. I really wasn't sure how to interpret it. I'm glad that I did that, because now I think I get it. This is one of those movies that comes so close to the truth, it should almost be taken as a documentary, rather than a feature film. There is no compelling plot, there is no hero, there is no big story/lesson. This movie reflects real life so well, that it completely fails to give you the feelings you expect a movie to give. Because real life, unlike a movie, is very slow, quiet and subtle. It's like a story you'd hear someone tell about someone else, and the ending, more likely than not, would be that in the end nothing happened, everyone went their separate ways. I would call this movie a valse between the themes of what is real, fake and reality. A lot of the people who give this movie a high rating sympathies with a Latino gang, because they perceive them as real. I think these people miss the point, because while the gang may seem more conscientious of their presence, or more in touch with reality, they are still pieces of crap. I mean, they're drug dealers who sell crack- cocaine! They're real alright, real and evil. And while the little white girl(s) who get(s) good grades and not enough lessons in reality from their parents, that is, why they live in a nice house and gated community, as opposed to say, a crack ghetto? Are just confused, scared, lonely and forced into these situations/realities. They're too naive, young and stupid to know better and with no strong parental involvement (the girl even has a line akin to that in the movie "You're never here!" she yells at her dad) it's not really their fault that they find themselves in these places.Like I said, I was going to give this film a bad rating and a bad review, but realizing just how deep and close it cuts to the truth of the matter, I'm going to give it the best rating there is on this system, because that is what I feel it deserves.

Despite the fact that this movie is like the umpteenth variation of Rebel Without A Cause, anybody who has gone to a high school in an affluent area in the last decade and seen the amount of pampered young 'wiggers' there are knows that the premise of this flick is relevant to today's youth and is worth exploring. Unfortunately, the movie fails to deliver on this promising premise and only succeeds in wasting a fine performance from Anne Hathaway.The movie WANTS to make a powerful statement about spoiled, naive, pseudo-disillusioned youths searching for identity in the superficial only to receive a colossal reality check when they realize the life they've been imitating isn't as glamorous as they had thought. Unfortunately, this noble message is lost in a weak script and characters that are either one-dimensional, unbelievable or both. Although one must consider the fact that the screenplay was for the most part written by a 16-year-old girl before judging it, it is disappointing that an Academy Award-winning co-writer with some experience with this genre of film (Stephen Gaghan) could not give the screenplay and characters a more authentic feel.Even if it was the screenwriter's intention to make the script's dialogue horrible for the sake of legitimizing just how inane the gang of rich white teens are acting, the horrid screen writing comes off so cartoonish that the viewer will have an extremely difficult time accepting the dialogue, and consequently the behavior, of these characters as being legitimate. As a result, the gang of rich white wannabe thugs come off, for the most part, as being overwrought caricatures saddled with some of the most laughably horrible dialogue ever heard in a motion picture. As for the gang of cholo thugs in the movie, they come off as being far too nice and too stereotypical to Latinos, and thus seem only marginally less cartoony that the gang of rich white kids.The movie's lone saving grace is Anne Hathaway. Playing a role that shares some parallels with and could be considered a natural extension of her smart-girl-with-a-rebellious-streak Meghan Green character from the short-lived TV series Get Real, hers was the only character in the movie that had any sort of depth and believability. The script, despite its many shortcomings, succeeds in making it clear just how self-aware, intelligent, and capable of good Hathaway's character is, in spite of her actions as a member of the gang of rich white teens, giving the film its lone three-dimensional character. Because of Hathaway's talent as an actress, as well as her successful exploitation of the public's predominant perception of her as a wholesome girl next door for this film, it is easy for the audience to believe that Hathaway's character is the rebel-without-a-clue fish out of water that the script is trying to portray her as. Hathaway's acting is superb, head and shoulders above anyone else in the film, which adds to her character's legitimacy. However, the people who see this movie will likely be too busy snickering at the inane lines of dialogue she's repeatedly forced to drop or, more likely, be gaping at their TV thinking "O...M...G! The chick from The Princess Diaries is actually TOPLESS!" to notice her solid performance.Which leads to a discussion of arguably the biggest reason most people even know this film exists. Hathaway has claimed in interviews that she only does nudity in films if she deems it necessary to the story. While a case can be made that most of the nudity in the film was appropriate when considering the context of the scenes in which it was featured, I find myself questioning just how "necessary" it is, for example, to show Hathaway's character popping her top while making out with her boyfriend (or for that matter, to see Bijou Phillips' character in the film topless while taking a bubble bath). That's not to say this movie should be mistaken for a late-night film on Skinemax; it most certainly isn't. But Hathaway is topless just enough in this film to make this obvious attempt to expand her acting repertoire beyond the roles in family films she had previously been limited to seem heavy-handed and maybe even a little desperate. Anne, take it from me, you're a wonderful actress. That alone will do more to land you mature roles than taking off your top for sex scenes in a poorly-scripted indie movie ever will.When all is said and done, the amount of nudity in this movie only made it worse; when you factor the amount of it in along with in how disappointing the movie is, it only adds evidence to the argument that the only reason this movie exists was for Hathaway to prove to us just how far she was willing to go to avoid being typecast as Princess Mia Thermopolis for the rest of her acting career...which is a shame, considering her legitimately solid acting job in this movie.Rent "Kids" or "Thirteen" instead; both films are about topics similar to this movie and both are far better.