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Rappin'

Play trailer Poster for Rappin' PG 1985 1h 32m Musical Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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Tomatometer 2 Reviews 32% Popcornmeter 100+ Ratings
An ex-convict (Mario Van Peebles) shows residents of his Pittsburgh ghetto how to drive out riffraff with rap music.

Critics Reviews

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Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com Rated: 2/5 Aug 8, 2005 Full Review Daniel M. Kimmel Worcester Telegram & Gazette Rated: 1/5 Feb 8, 2004 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

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bnreggie b I couldn't remember this movie even existed. It's so horrible that it took me about 28 minutes to cut it off. Bad acting. Bar rapping. Bad script. Bad hair. Bad clothes. Just plain crap. This is like watching someone strain on the toilet after Taco Bell at 3am. It plain up and down stinks. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 10/06/25 Full Review Audience Member Good lord! This ridiculous movie needs to be seen to be believed. After the Snack Attack number kicked in, I too believed that rap could save the world and save the streets! Rated 3 out of 5 stars 04/13/22 Full Review Audience Member I love this movie. If Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo exists in its own dimension, this one is the Earth-3 to its Earth-2, a place where rap can save the world. And to make it even better, it's filmed right where I call home, Pittsburgh, PA. Directed by Joel Silberg — the man who brought us Breakin' and Lambada — and written by Adam Friedman and Robert J. Litz, this is the story of Rappin' John Hood (Mario Van Peebles), who has just been released from prison only to come home to a neighborhood dealing with gangs and developers kicking out everyone to prepare for high paying real estate. He reunites with his old crew, like Moon (Kadeem Hardison from A Different World) and Ice (Eric La Salle), Fats (Melvin Plowden) and his little brother Allan (Leo O'Brien, the real-life younger brother of The Sugarland Gang's Master Gee) while dealing with a rival gang led by Duane (Charles Flohe, The Delta Force, P.O.W. the Escape), who loses his girlfriend Dixie, who used to be John's girlfriend, back to John (Tasia Valenza, who is the voice of Sniper Wolf in the Metal Gear Solid games). There's also Cedric (Rory Clanton), a former resident of the neighborhood who is selling it out to the white man when he isn't making deals with Duane's gang. And there's a plot about the music industry wanting to hire John, probably just for the song "Snack Attack." It also has the Force MDs and Ice-T himself shows up and either he or Master Gee supposedly ghost rapped Van Peeble's rhymes– which the credits claim he wrote himself — but man, Ice-T provides a nice multiverse crossover with the Breakin' films. When he raps "Killers," a song all about bad cops, rich murders and politicians treating normal people as "just puppets in the games they play" alongside David Storrs, you'll be excited that a happy-go-lucky film doesn't forget to include harsh reality inside the bubblegum. There's also a scene where Fats and the local lady of the evening, Rosalita, pull a scam not unlike a scene in every Lemon Popsicle movie where a heavyset man gets surprised by a woman's boyfriend coming home. And the movie even has room for Mommie Dearest and Amityville II: The Possession star Rutanya Alda to be in this! Someone on a Pittsburgh film site picked this as one of the worst movies ever made here. What a joke. Come on — we should all be so lucky as to live in the same neighborhood as John Hood. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/06/23 Full Review Audience Member The worst movie about rap that I've ever seen. The rappin seems at the end of the movie gave me a headache. Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 02/09/23 Full Review Audience Member Holy crap, you have to watch this... Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Audience Member A.k.a Asphalt Vibration. One of the most overlooked film from the 80's. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Read all reviews
Rappin'

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Movie Info

Synopsis An ex-convict (Mario Van Peebles) shows residents of his Pittsburgh ghetto how to drive out riffraff with rap music.
Director
Joel Silberg
Producer
Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan
Screenwriter
Adam Friedman, Robert Litz
Production Co
Golan-Globus, Cannon Pictures Inc.
Rating
PG
Genre
Musical, Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Oct 2, 2018
Runtime
1h 32m
Sound Mix
Surround