Clowning Their Way Off The Mean Streets

By RICHARD CORLISS

Why would someone in full clown regalia wander--like a child into a war zone--through the streets of a toxic inner city? Is he on a quest for instant martyrdom? No. He's Tommy Johnson, an ex-drug dealer now known as Tommy the Hip-Hop Clown, and he's recruiting some of the best local talent of South Central Los Angeles to help create a frenetic, feel-good style of dance called clowning. Missionaries of optimism, they go about, one clowner says, "making smiles where there were no smiles, laughter where there was no laughter," and turning the meanest Los Angeles turf into what one proud mom calls Hollywatts.

Such is the premise of Rize, which like several other summer docs (Rock School and Murderball), works up to a big showdown. The warring factions aren't the Bloods and the Crips but the Clowners and the Krumpers, right. And the tournament is Tommy's Battle Zone V, which attracts thousands of fans who vote on each one-on-one dance-off with the volume of their cheers. A documentary that is all action, no narration, Rize lobs stereotype grenades--political (blacks in whiteface) and social (Tommy in clown garb at a funeral service)--that are defused by the genial mood. This would be an uplifting film even without some of the most amazingly agitated dancing since the Nicholas Brothers hung up their taps. Throw in that preternatural terpsichore, and Rize rises further. It is nothing less than a call to emotional levitation. --R.C.