Why so much hype?

Very Cool!!!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is a movie about some vapid white broads. That chick from some Disney flick was in it. Some people think she's hot; meh, if you like potato chips. Her boyfriend buys some sticks and stems from some lil bite sized vato with a NKOTB ponytail. Next thing you know, Disney chick is trying to earn her merit badge for humping an authentic brown person. One of her lame friends insists she wants to take on three brown wieners at the same time, therefore making her the most coolest girl in their white suburbanite high school. But as it turns out, she tapped out after two. So she runs out of the room crying because her sphincter is irritated. Next thing you know, three poor hombres are getting charged with rape. Moral of this movie? Never trust a succubus white she devil...Oh and that one dude from Training Day was in it. I liked him though. He was cool. That is all.

Teenager Anne Hathaway (as Allison) is bored going down on phony boyfriend Mike Vogel (as Toby). When she and her rappin' high school friends kick a trip to East Los Angeles, Ms. Hathaway finds herself attracted to real life gangsta Freddy Rodriguez (as Hector), who makes Mr. Vogel pee his pants. Soon, Hathaway and likewise bored "gal pal" Bijou Phillips (as Emily Rubin) are up for smacking the hook with da cholos. Then, things get out of hand… Huh? Wassup with the ending? Apparently, we're supposed to guess. Anyway, this was an unconvincing story. They start off with a cast of performers too far removed from both sweet sixteen and Compton. Don't feel too much like a pedophile while you enjoy the topless pair of leading women. They're of age. The phony wigger gangsta jive is laughable. Totally. The story becomes moderately interesting when Ms. Phillips makes her accusation, then drops off.**** Havoc (6/26/05) Barbara Kopple ~ Anne Hathaway, Bijou Phillips, Freddy Rodriguez, Mike Vogel

This movie was thrown out on DVD in 2005 without any real theatrical release. It's well pedigreed for such treatment, directed by famed documentarian Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA), written by late phenom Jessica Kaplan, "fixed" by famed screenwriter Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) and starring Anne Hathaway in her first serious role. The film is far from perfect, but it isn't nearly as bad as people have said. It's main problem is that it is undoubtedly exploitative. Hathaway and co-star Bijou Philips both get naked, the kind of naked that leaves the viewer feeling sleazy. The film is about a group of teenagers from upscale Los Angeles who like to play gangsta, pretending they're black or Latino. When Hathaway's boyfriend is threatened by a Latino drug dealer (Freddy Rodriguez of Planet Terror), she is attracted to the more authentic gangsta scene. She becomes involved with Rodriguez, which leads to the titular havoc. While many of the characters are one-dimensional and uninteresting, Hathaway's is well written, and she turns in the best performance of her career up to that point. She's nearly as intriguing here as she would later be in Rachel Getting Married. Also appearing is my favorite young actor of today, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but he has a pretty weak role, so it's not worth watching just for him.

I don't think all these comments do the movie justice, I do not think it was horrible, and I think the acting was actually excellent, but overall this movie just made me uncomfortable. I think everyone who says Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anne Hathaway acted horribly, did not understand the characters at all, the reality is that their characters acted terribly, and so Gordon-Levitt and Hathaway's performances were actually amazing, in the fact that they could portray teenagers with such skewed ideas of reality. From a previous comment that I agree with: "Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character Sam is the best example of this skewed image. To some, his performance may seem over the top, but this is how Sam truly feels as though gang members act." I don't think I would recommend this movie to the casual movie-goer, but I thought the acting was actually great, because it would be difficult to act as a character who tries to act like someone ridiculous.