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Plot

Set in the Manhattan street milieu that served him well in West Side Story, Robert Wise's Rooftops tells the story of T, a quiet, soft-spoken teen-ager who has left his broken home and is living in a makeshift shelter in an old water tower on top of an abandoned tenement building. There are other kids like him, including Squeak, a talented graffiti artist who joins T after an altercation involving his mother's boy friend. T and Squeak manage to scrape together what little money they need through minor sins (stripping cars, etc.), and at night all these street inhabitants get together in a vacant lot to "combat" dance, in which they use a combination of karate and dancing to force an opponent off of a platform. Into this mix comes Lobo, a drug dealer who moves into T's building and turns it into a crack house. Lobo's beautiful cousin Elana serves as his lookout – not because she wants to, but because her father's heart attack has left her family in dire financial straits. T and Elana become interested in each other, but T and Lobo are at odds with each other – which fact leads to a showdown in which T must put his "combat" skills to good use.
MPAA Rating:
Genre(s):
Family,Musicals,Romance
Run Time:
108min.
Theatrical Release Date:
03/17/1989
DVD Release Date:
11/26/2002
Distributor(s):
New Visions
Director(s):
Robert Wise
Starring:
Jason Gedrick , Troy Beyer , Eddie Velez , Alexis Cruz , Tisha Campbell
Themes:
Inner City Blues,Opposites Attract,Interracial/Cross-Cultural Romance,Dangerous Attraction,Star-Crossed Lovers
Tone:
Bright,Lavish,Rousing,Sentimental,Slick,Earnest
Keywords:
Hispanic,Kung-Fu,bad-guy,bad-guy-turns-good,cross-cultural-relations,dance [art],drug-dealer,gangster,good-guy,martial-arts,racial-tension,racism,rampage,romance,star-crossed-lovers,street-smart,teenagers
Country of Origin:
USA (03-17-1989)
Language:
English