Rize

There are some things at my age you learn to concede. I will never write the Great American Novel, chances are I will never win the Nobel Peace Prize, and I will probably never learn the stripper dance. What's this stripper dance, you ask? Go see David LaChapelle's Rize and get krumped.

I get equal parts excited and agitated when I see documentaries that really wow me. It's a love/hate relationship because I understand what goes into them and how damn hard they are to make. At the same time, I am that much more critical...Especially when someone who's obviously well-connected and well-endowed like celebrity fashion photographer David LaChapelle is at the helm. Add to it that I am trying to finish one myself and any movie-going experience can potentially become a recipe for disaster. But Rize, you just gotta see it to believe it. I'm not saying there aren't problems with it. When a white guy comes in and falls in love with the beauty and power of black bodies, much like Mapplethorpe, it makes sense to be wary.

So clowning, krumping, and stripper dancing are all things that go on in South Central. Kid get together--kids with incredibly cut bodies, I might add--and they paint their faces--some even dress up in clown costumes and rent themselves out to parties--and then they dance. Fiercely. Think break-dancing, vogueing and capoeira only on serious amphetamines. Think like nothing you've ever seen before. Think young people with not a lot of options, but a helluva a lot of rage, venting, representin', coming together and swinging back.

Rize proudly states at the beginning of the film that no part of the film was sped up. And so LaChapelle sets us up; we anticipate something truly out there and LaChapelle delightedly keeps on serving us up. With an obvious nod to Paris Is Burning, we see, over and over, the dancers carefully applying their make-up while reflecting on how hard their lives have been, what few choices there are, and how necessary these surrogate families have become for each of them. Clearly, LaChapelle wants us to see these men and women as urban warriors. In fact, LaChapelle keeps knocking us over the head with that same metaphor.

It's not a very complicated documentary. But beauty, like a Bruce Weber photograph, he does capture. And he does a pretty decent job of letting the dancers just speak, or rather krump, for themselves.