When we talk about movies that capture an era, we’re talking
about those movies that instantly catapult you back to that time and place they
take place in. Some movies of this nature recreate an era, while others capture
it as it unfolds. For example, Grease (1978)
is a film that was made in the 70’s but was trying to re-capture the rock and
roll era of the 50’s while films like Beat Street for example, they capture a
moment in time as it was happening, in its purest form, no fakeness involved.
The problem with films that try and recreate an era is that sometimes they end
up exaggerating everything to the point where the representation becomes nothing
more than a cartoon version of the real thing. Beat Street and Krush Groove where two films
that captured that time and place in which hip-hop and rap where just getting
started, and breakin’ was the newest dance in town.
I was lucky enough to have lived in The Bronx during the mid
80’s, a cool time to be living there if there ever was any. This was the
birthplace of hip-hop and breakin’. I got to see firsthand b-boys and b-girls
dancing on the streets of the Bronx, breakin’ their days away. This was the
time when hip hoppers carried their boom boxes on their shoulders, and wore
nothing but Adidas or Pumas. I’d walk up to the corner store to buy some candy
(I was just a kid) and sure enough, there would be a b-boy breakin’ on a
cardboard box right there on the side walk. As a kid, I was amazed by all of
it, because these dance moves were really difficult to pull off! If you didn’t
do them just right, chances are you could break your neck! Still, I loved
seeing those dance battles happening in the school yard! I remember as a kid
trying to spin like a b-boy in my living room floor, hoping to maybe one day
become as good as them, I never did, but hey, I had my day in the sun! I remember Breakin’ was all about the attitude,
yet, it was all friendly. Dance teams defied each other, but it was always in
good fun. As one of the characters in Beat Street says “There are far worse
things these boys could be doing then dancing!”
Now, because of this Breakin’ craze that took over New York
and the world, well, of course, Hollywood had to take a bite out of it. Suddenly
there was this race to make a movie, to cash in on the whole thing. The thing
about fad movies is that sometimes in order to come out before the fad fades
away, they are made in a hurry and sadly they end up not being very good. I can
mention many examples, Lambada (1990) and The Forbidden Dance (1990) both of
which were made to cash in on the whole Lambada craze of the late 80’s and 90’s.
That’s another thing about fad movies, they always come in two’s and sometimes
in three’s, because there’s always more than one studio looking to cash in on
the craze. This is why we have Breakin’ (1984), Beat Street (1984), Krush
Groove (1985) and Rappin’ (1985). A prime example of a bad fad movie is Breakin’
2: Electric Boogaloo (1984), which while fun to watch (because it is so bad) the
film is a joke of the era that it’s trying to represent, a Hollywood rendition
of what they thought Breakin’ and b-boying was all about. Hell, this rush job of a sequel was filmed, edited and put in theaters in less then seven months after the first one hit theaters! Boy did this movie get it
wrong! It lacked that street cred that Beat Street had in spades.
That’s what I enjoy about Beat Street, it just feels so
genuine. We follow a group of kids who are all struggling to survive in the
streets of The Bronx. One of them is ‘Double K’ a D.J. who’s looking to become
a ‘superstar’ with his rhymes and his music. He is big brother to ‘Lee’ the
youngest of the group, who also happens to be an extremely talented b-boy. Mind
you, Lee is not a ‘break dancer’, because the term break dancer or break dancing
is an offense to b-boys and girls of the world, it is a term that Hollywood and
the media came up with to commercialize the whole thing. To those who like to
Break, you are a b-boy or a b-girl, never a break dancer, you don’t break dance,
you break. Then we have ‘Ramon’ a.k.a. ‘Ramo’, a Puerto Rican graffiti artist
who likes to plaster his art on the trains of New York City, he was a
continuing battle with his father, who tells Ramo to get a real job and stop
being a delinquent. Ramo thinks otherwise, to him his train graffiti is art,
and art is not a crime. Ramo is also struggling with finding a place for his girl and his baby, problem is he doesn’t have a job! Beat Street effectively mixes the world of Breakin’ and Graffiti art with the struggles of
the less fortunate. Some of the characters in the film are squatters, living in
abandoned buildings, some dance on the streets for money. But they all dream big. As Lee and Double K’s mother says to them at one point “you can keep your
dreams gentlemen, but you gotta have something to fall back on”.
Highly recommend you guys watch a documentary called Style
Wars (1983), which follows a group of graffiti artists through New York City as
they paint their graffiti on the walls and trains of New York. The documentary
shows the emotion these kids felt when they saw a train passing by and their art was traveling down the rails with
it. It’s an awesome documentary; highly recommend it because it truly captured
the essence of what it meant to be a graffiti artist in New York, during the
late 70’s early 80’s. In some ways, Beat Street is a film version of that
documentary; the influence of Style Wars on Beat Street is strongly felt. Graffiti had to be a part of a film like Beat
Street because at the time, Graffiti, Breakin’, Hip Hop and New York were all
laced together. Breakin’ and graffiti went hand in hand with each other, they
were part of the same world. If you were a b-boy, chances are you also did some
graffiti.
The film showcases some truly talented b-boys doing their
thing, there’s this whole scene that takes place inside of a New York dance
club called ‘The Roxy’ that’s simply amazing, the dance moves these kids pulled
off! You gotta see it to believe it, made me wish I was right there at that moment
in time. You can tell this is the real deal here, these are true b-boys doing
their thing, and the filmmakers were lucky enough that they got these street
kids to do the real thing for them. Then
there’s the music, which was awesome. Many of these films (especially Krush
Groove) had entire scenes devoted to a musical act. Basically, the film stops
and the band that’s playing on stage takes over the movie. In this case we get
Kool Moe Dee, Afrika Bambataa, boy, Afrika Bambataa really stirs up a party
when they get up on stage! Awesome scene!
A theme that runs through both of these movies is the theme
of “making it”, following your dream and becoming a super star by doing what
you love. While Beat Street was all about graffiti and breakin’, Krush Groove
was more about the music world itself, the side of the performer, the producer
and the distributors. Krush Groove is unique in that way, because this film
takes place in a time before I-Tunes and digital downloads. This was a time
when if you wanted to hear an album, you had to actually physically buy it. I’ve
never stopped buying albums myself, I have to admit, I enjoy actually owning a
cd as opposed to simply downloading a song onto my computer. There’s some up
and downs to that, for example, you can download a song, but if you don’t make
a physical copy of it and your computer breaks down, then you lose that album,
or you whole record collection. This is something that doesn’t happen if you physically
own your albums. Then of course, there’s the coolness of album art and lyrics
which usually come with a sleeve. Maybe I’m a dinasour here and I haven’t
adapted well to technical advancements, but I guess I’m old fashioned that way.
I like to own my albums and my books.
Krush Groove is a fictionalized account of the early days of
‘Def Jam Records’, and what’s cool for me about Krush Groove is how
many of the musical groups of the 80’s hip-hop scene made it into the film. Of
course, the main stars of the show are Run DMC. This is basically their story
but also featured prominently are Sheila E., Kurtis Blow and The Fat Boys. I
love Run DMC and all they did for hip-hop and rap, but I’ll be honest, me and
my brothers where huge fans of The Fat Boys, we loved those guys, their songs
were fun, and the trio themselves were also funny. They even ended up making
one more film, a comedy called Disorderlies (1987). Re-watching Krush Groove
and seeing The Fat Boys again was like going back in time to when I was about
ten years old! In retrospect, I think it was not such a good idea for The Fat
Boys to take pride in being overweight. There is this scene in the movie where
The Fat Boys are depressed because they lose in a singing contest, so to cheer
themselves up, they go to a Pizzeria and basically eat their hearts out. They stuff
their mouths with pizza and pasta as they sing their song “All you can eat”.
Gotta be honest, that scene comes off as gross now, it portrays an unhealthy
fixation on food, the word “gluttony” came to mind. It felt
wrong for these guys to promote the idea of pigging out on food like there’s no
tomorrow. I enjoy food as much as the next guy, but there’s an unhealthy danger
in over indulging the way these guys did. I know they are called ‘The Fat Boys’
but the whole scene, and the message they transmitted with it, just felt wrong.
I did a search on The Fat Boys for this article, I was sad to discover that one
of them, Darren Robinson, a.k.a. “The Human Beat Box” died of a heart attack in
1995. Also, Mark Morales, the Puerto Rican Fat Boy, well, he’s lost some weight
and aint all that fat anymore!
Beasty Boys in the house
Aside from these groups that I mentioned, LL COOL J also
makes his feature film debut in Krush Groove. Apparently he wasn't all that big
yet, but they gave him a five minute spotlight where they let him do his thing;
which made me think that this film is filled with lots of groups who were
hungry to get into the spotlight and everybody wanted to get on board! In that
way, this film also reminded me of films like Purple Rain (1984) and Fame (1980),
films about talented people who know they got what it takes and want the world
to know it! Even The Beasty Boys also make a brief appearance! It was funny to
hear some people “booing” them when they went on stage, I guess the idea of
white rappers wasn’t all that popular yet. The thing about Krush Groove is that
it might not be the best acted film, but it has a lot of heart, a lot of
talented people involved and it also captures that time, the mid 80’s when
musical acts took pride in being eccentric, loud and bombastic. This is
something I miss in today’s music and films for that matter. Highly recommend
checking out both of these movies, they captured the 80’s in a spray can!
Rating Beat Street: 4 out of 5
Rating Krush Groove: 3 ½ out of 5
5 comments:
Great reviews. Love your personal anecdotes. Must have been really cool to live in the Bronx during the 80s.
Never heard of either of these films but will definitely try and check them out.
Living in The Bronx during those years was a special time in deed, running to the train station magazine stand to buy comic books, that's what it was all about in those days!
Beat Street is the best of the bunch, I mean there where a group of movies made about the same era, but Beat Street is the King of the Beat.
Great review! Your words and memories take me back to catching BREAKIN' and BEAT STREET when they came out in theaters. Good times.
But you're right, BEAT STREET is definitely the best of the bunch. It has a gritty, authentic feel that the others don't have or try and fail to achieve. It helps that the cast was made up largely unknowns. I don't think Rae Dawn Chong had done much at that point. But it helps you believe that these actors are really these characters.
Agree J.D., the fact that most of the cast is made up of unknowns works like magic, their performances come off as fresh and authentic. Rae Dawn Chong last acting jobe before Beat Street was a film called Quest for Fire which by the way is one of the best performances of her life, that movie is so underrated, I reviewed it a while back, highly recommend it.
Love this movie. I highly recommend this movie to all 80's baby.
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