MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Beat’ Goes On-- Unfortunately

You know you’re in trouble when, at the beginning of “The Beat” (at the Westside Pavilion), a kid on an inner-city rooftop peers down at some other kids in the street below and pronounces, “Mutant angels singing around dancing fires.”

The boy on the roof is the other-worldly Rex (David Jacobson), the newcomer at Osmo High, a compulsive rhymer who’s regarded as a nerd but who proves to be, by golly, the veritable Pied Piper of John Savage’s English class, instilling pride and self-confidence to a bunch of cynical deadbeats. But Rex’s incessant sub-- very sub--Ginsberg “howls” are so awful it’s inconceivable that he could inspire anything but massive peer contempt.

To give “The Beat,” written and directed by Paul Mones, the benefit of the doubt, maybe it did work on stage, as hard as that is to imagine. But on the screen it’s silly, tedious and artificial. What’s more, it echoes back to “West Side Story,” “Blackboard Jungle” and “Rebel Without a Cause”--Sal Mineo would have been the perfect Rex--rather than connecting with anything that’s happening today. (An inner-city school with exactly one black student?) So help me, the kids are inspired by Rex to put together a number for the school’s big talent show; you begin to wonder if they’re going to call up Mickey and Judy for help. Alas, while Rex may be a hero in English class, the school psychologist--a male Nurse Ratched caricature--has decided, out of pure killjoy evil, to have poor, fragile Rex (who after all probably is an angel, or at least an extraterrestrial) committed. Even Savage seems a throwback, acting in a heavily mannered proletarian style, right out of Actors Studio, circa 1950.

‘THE BEAT’

A Vestron Pictures release of a Ruthless/Kilik/Wechsler production. Executive producers Ruth Vitale, Lawrence Kasanoff. Producers Julia Phillips, Jon Kilik, Nick Wechsler. Writer-director Paul Mones. With John Savage, David Jacobson, William McNamara, Kara Glover. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).