Director Nabil Hayouch’s “Casablanca Beats” takes itself very seriously, to the point of ad nauseum. Here is a Moroccan hip-hop version of “School of Rock,” only without the the self-aware humour or Richard Linklater’s artful camera.
The film does start off well enough as we meet a former-rapper-turned-teacher hailing from the mean streets of Casablanca. He’s just landed a gig at a community arts center where he will teach a ragtag ensemble of desolate teenagers how to rap. They all have issues back at home — whether it’d be abusive parents, poverty, hunger and all the misery porn that usually comes with such circular cliches.
The kids eventually start to come on their own, quite quickly, actually, perfecting the hip-hop game and that’s when the film begins to fall apart. Hayouch ends up turning his story into a choreographic nightmare. “Casablanca Beats” literally turns into a musical before our very eyes. It doesn’t help that the songs are weak, nor that they are, for the most part, lip-sung by the actors. What was at first a gritty treatise on a Moroccan community rich in culture is now a slick and glossy mainstream picture. [D]