LA Originals

Great Sunday afternoon documentary about the guy who tattooed loads of famous hip hop stars and took loads of great photos. Simple.

As someone who grew up on hip hop culture and specialises in arts I was really excited to see the roots of the LA scene. This movie had me glued to my seat for the first 20/30 minutes but after that I started to notice a lot of flaws. The progression of a timeline is very disorganised. They keep jumping from one time to another and then back to one from 4 stories ago. It's all over the place. It's also very celebrity soundbite oriented with half of the clips being reused over and over again. Like I get it: a bunch of famous rappers said Cartoon/Estevan is cool. I don't need to see the same clips on repeat every few minutes. Plenty other endlessly recycled material also.

It's a cool watch but it's not that deep and after 20/30 minutes you've pretty much seen the whole movie. Kind of disappointing.

First off, much props to Mr Cartoon and Estevan. But here im reviewing the documentary and not them. I feel it focussed way too much on celebs and their soundbites. It is supposed to impress people that are in the celeb worshiping culture. Im not. Im much more interested in authentic stories and real people. The part where they document non celebrities and people that live the LA street culture for real was a very small segment towards the end of the doc. Which was the greatest and most interesting part of the doc.

Too much of this documentary was celebrities saying how cool Cartoon's tats are and how cool Estevan's pictures are. Kind of a huge circle jerking type of ish that goes on a lot in generic documentaries. That's a shame, since there is so much potential with Cartoon and Estevan as a the centre of a documentary and with such a budget. It could have become epic, instead of generic.

One of the most entertaining documentaries I've seen for awhile. Highly recommended.

Awesome watch and lots of detail. A must watch for entertainment seekers.