Following in the path of such well-intentioned but flawed rap documentaries as The Show and Rhyme & Reason, Straight From The Streets aims to prove that rap music is an unambiguous force for good in the black community. To illustrate this thesis, the film opens with footage of the societal discord that followed the acquittal of the officers charged in the Rodney King beating and concludes with footage of the theoretically triumphant Million Man March. Within that loose framework, however, Straight From The Streets is a mess, a free-associative collection of interview footage, car-show footage, footage of vaguely comic gang-bangers patrolling their block like an oversized tree house, footage of rappers excitedly lip-synching to their own music, and random footage of whatever the filmmakers seemed to have thought illustrated the simple moral and social goodness of rap music. One of Straight From The Streets' major flaws is its blindly uncritical acceptance of anything its pro-rap subjects have to say, a fuzzy-headedness that grows unintentionally comic when 1994-era Death Row artists speak hesitatingly about how great their lives are as Suge Knight's employees. Straight From The Streets' insistence that rap culture is both politically active and politically astute is undermined by the vague platitudes the rappers' spout in lieu of substantial political criticism. Likewise, the social programs the film touts as remedies to the violence and despair of the ghetto—football leagues, car shows, rap concerts—seem like caricatures of what conservatives perceive social programs to be like. Still, despite its sloppiness, Straight From The Streets is energetic and entertaining, even if it's never as illuminating or politically savvy as it should be.