Clarissa Mora
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
Lucia Ayala
It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
Winifred
The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
logan-ensinger
The only reason this got a 2 rather than a 1 is because of the cinematography. I could go on for a lot longer than 1000 words about why this "documentary" fails to stand on its own. I consider this movie about the pretentiousness of Pras Michel than the hard living you'll find in Skid Row. First, Pras does not go on the real skid row, as mentioned earlier he spends most of the film sitting in a car garage refusing to actually go out into the scary reality. He stays out of the area, panhandles, REFUSED free food given by a kind heart on the grounds that he was vegetarian. I almost shut it off right there. That is not what this film was supposed to be.Any credibility that he was truly homeless was gone. When night time comes, I'm pretty sure he spend a maximum of one hour pretending to sleep in an alley before moving to nicer, safer ground. Again, not what was promised. Spending all of your "hard earned" money on one meal does not portray as desperate a situation as I had expected, and I found myself raging more and more at the subject than what was supposed to be the focus. There are plenty of better documentaries out there if you are interested in the subject, and with a lot less whining and crying from the "actor". One real night on Skid Row would have scared this guy right back into his penthouse.
Roland E. Zwick
Nine dollars and a tent – that's all hip-hop artist Pras Michel (of The Fugees) brings with him when he goes undercover to live on Skid Row disguised as a homeless person. His purpose? To experience first hand what life is like for those who live on the streets, and to share that experience with the world at large. "Skid Row" documents the nine days and nights he spent trying to make it in the homeless capital of the world, Los Angeles.The movie hits us with a slew of depressing statistics and provides a brief history of the place, while Pras learns how to survive through begging and panhandling and by maneuvering his way through a world few of us will ever know – or even care to acknowledge. The movie, shot with a hidden camera, is a fairly straight-forward documentary, though the substandard sound recording makes some of the dialogue hard to make out. But the message shines through in Pras' heartbreaking encounters with drug addicts, runaways, and friends and families of individuals who have gone missing and may be living on Skid Row.The enormity and seeming intractability of the problem can make watching this film an overwhelming experience for the viewer, but there are glimmers of hope in seeing how many of the individuals who work with the homeless were themselves down-and-out at one point in their lives (many are themselves recovering addicts), but somehow managed to pull themselves up and are now giving back to those they left behind.Pras and the others involved in the project deserve praise for their courage and gratitude for opening our eyes to the problem through their film.
johnnymacbest
Poverty. Decay. Social despair and isolation. The very things that continue to plague our society is portrayed here in this documentary by former "Fugee" front-man Praz as he goes this harrowing and dangerous journey on the streets of Skid Row, Los Angeles, a place so rife with decadence and hopelessness; seemingly isolated from the rest of LA that it's almost a city in itself with it's own history, culture and social norms. But at the center of it all lies heart, with a dozen of lost souls who are eager to reclaim their lost lives. Some have tried and succeeded. Some have failed. Despite their unkempt nature, these individuals are, for the most part, human beings just like everyone else. Powerful and at times disturbing, Skid Row reminds us how easy it is to fall into an inescapable situation where there is no easy way out or answers to one of society's most economically debilitating problems of the human race. For anyone whose very livelihoods are threatened by the financial turmoil that is slowly but surly crippling the nation and the world, I urge you to watch this film. To gain an understanding and think long and hard about the fragility of our society. It may hit too close to home for comfort for some, but it is essential viewing nonetheless. Only then can we, as human beings, come together and eradicate this social menace of poverty once and for all.
moviecriticfan
I'm a student at UCLA and was lucky enough to attend the premiere of Pras' documentary, Skid Row. First of all, kudos to Pras for having the courage to go undercover and actually live on the streets with no food or shelter, and tape everything for the whole world to see. This film is extremely revealing. It introduces the homeless as people, it puts a face to the epidemic of homelessness- revealing who they are and how they ended up on the streets. I will never look at a homeless person the same way. Skid Row is not the usual boring voice-over/ talking head doc that many are acquainted with. In Skid Row, you see Pras as a vulnerable man, not as the untouchable hip-hop star of the Fugees that we are familiar with. This is honestly the best documentary I've ever seen. Skid Row definitely deserves an Oscar!
