Larry Clark returns to the semidocumentary strategy of Kids (1995) for this woolly comedy about seven Latino skate punks in South Central LA. The director met some of the teenage boys while doing a photo shoot in South Central and based his script on their lives, which makes for some genuine moments in the movie’s first half. Yet unlike the amateur cast of Kids—which included such future professionals as Rosario Dawson, Chloe Sevigny, and Leo Fitzpatrick—these guys can’t act. In the second half Clark makes an abrupt turn into wacky but more conventional fish-out-of-water comedy as the rockers journey to Beverly Hills for some skateboarding action and have a tough time getting home; weirdly reminiscent of A Hard Day’s Night, this part is more digestible but betrays the realism of the earlier scenes. R, 105 min.