Remember Kids and how hard it seemed back in the day? Well, it's 2006 now, and the glamorousness of teenage wastoids is a thing of the past, a retro artifact of the 1990s. Keeping it real is the order of the day, and this documentary-style dramatization of the lives of some very real New York City girls is as gritty as it gets. Judy Marte (Raising Victor Vargas) steals the show as the thug drug dealer living with her junkie mom and mentally challenged brother.
Newcomer Anny Mariano is a shy 15-year-old who finds herself pregnant and incarcerated, and Paola Mendoza rounds out the troubled trio as a single-mom crackhead who loses her child to the state. This kind of cautionary morality tale has been done before, but On the Outs saves itself from after-school-special territory thanks to tough, human performances and plenty of streetwise authenticity.