FilmJerk Favorites

A group of unique directors and the essential works that you've got to see.

||| Rob Reiner |||
Rob Reiner

Son of comic genius Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner has picked up the family torch and directed some of the most memorable, quotable, and endearing comedies of the last two decades, and he’s no schmuck when it comes to dramas either.

This is a hilarious spoof filled with biting satire about a filmmaker making a documentary (or “rockumentary” if you will) about a once famous raucous British heavy metal band on a disastrous U.S concert tour, featuring the magnificent talents of co-stars/co-scripters Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. This granddaddy of the mocumentary speaks to the hard rockin’, air guitar playing 14-year-old boy in us all.

In this low-key sleeper hit based on a Stephen King story four young boys in 1959 Oregon set out on a camping trip in order to see a dead body one of them accidentally found. This is a loving memoir to a simpler time with an exceptionally talented young cast tentatively taking the steps on a road that leads to maturity.

Reiner turns a wry, even caustic, eye on men and women in friendship and in love, and that gray area in between. This is an engaging and smartly performed comedy about a pair of longtime platonic friends who turn a feud into a lasting friendship, determined not to let sex mess up a great relationship, until love threatens to ruin everything.

Recommended by CarrieSpecht

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You Got Served

By BrianOrndorf

January 30th, 2004

The hip-hop dance sequences in “You Got Served,” the new urban dance drama are thumping, exciting, and fun to watch. Too bad the rest of the film is positively hip-hopeless.


There’s a tradition in the dance films of the 80s and 90s, in that for every interesting scene of booty shaking, there must be at least twice as much clichéd and painful screenwriting to support it. With “Flashdance,” “Footloose,” and the two “Breakin’” films, the formula thrived to decent box office, and occasionally became cinema legend.

The tradition continues in the new decade with “You Got Served,” a highly energetic dance drama about covert dance competitions that sinks to mind-boggling depths of awfulness when the characters feel compelled to speak. Much like its cousin, the recent Jessica Alba misfire “Honey,” “Served” has this outlandish notion that the story is the real glue to the film’s success. Writer/director Christopher Stokes has plenty of great dance footage to work with, and, unlike “Honey,” the filmmaker seems to enjoy the rumbling thunder of the underground hip-hop nation of dance-offs, often letting the “crews” just do their thing without much obstruction. The movie does present an overtly urban storyline that is about as fictional as the dancing world depicted, including stogie-suckling crime lords, “big momma” type grandmothers, and the thematically desperate shooting of a 9 year-old to get the film to a climax. Oh, and the two leads of the film are well meaning DRUG COURIERS. Clearly, there’s not a lot to root for.

Whenever the film finds itself in a hole, Stokes cuts back to the dance footage, making the picture seem like a less depressing venture than it was before. The tightly choreographed routines are fun to watch, and they’re backed with a booming soundtrack that helps these propulsive sequences out immensely. It’s a wonder why Stokes just didn’t cut out the Ebonics-heavy dialog (which actress Jennifer Freeman has a hard time with, much to the delight of the audience I attended the screening with) and afterschool special material that clogs up the momentum of his film, and just showcase the dances on their own. But I guess I shouldn’t expect the director of “House Party 4” to have that kind of foresight.

“You Got Served” is borderline racist (all the Caucasian characters are designated as pure evil right away), the acting atrocious (by such “thespians” as Raz B, Lil’ Fizz, and J-Boog), and Stokes has a borderline grip on what making a movie is all about. But all that is silenced once the dancing begins, and it’s hard to deny a mighty power like that.

My rating: C