InstaRapFlix 18: DJ Demp: Dirty for Life

I have to admit, I selected today's flick: DJ Demp: Dirty for Life (Netflix rating: 1.3 stars) for one reason... because it's by the same company as my last InstaRapFlix post (it was even in their trailer reel), and it's the essentially same running time. So was this going to be another example of a notorious trailer reel and a tiny short masquerading as a full-length film?

Actually, no. Thank goodness. All 53 minutes of this film's running time are actually the film itself.

And what is the film itself? It's footage of DJ Demp's birthday celebration! Who's DJ Demp, you ask? Yeah... I wasn't sure either. He's not even on discogs (I just checked). But from watching the movie, I now know he's a DJ in Miami, who has "scratched for Trick Dad," and also been on the road with Luke and Lil Flip. For the first several minutes, we follow Demp to a high school basketball game, where he meets some friends and they pose for a photo in "Demp Week" shirts.

Then we get a few soundbites by artists like Fat Joe, David Banner, Clipse and Ja Rule who give quick shout-outs like, "It's Crack, shouting out to my man Demp. It's going down in a major way;" and then they're out. I keep seeing these throughout my InstaRapFlix series, and I still don't understand why these guys making the DVD think we want to see 'em. If they don't have anything at all to say, what's the point?

Well, unless you thrill at them, then this movie isn't for you. Because apart from some low quality concert footage from a Trick Daddy show, which plays in such short snippets you never hear even a quarter of a song at a time - it's more like 2-3 sentences worth... Apart from that, you just get more and more of these shout-outs, many by people you'll never have heard of before.

We do get to see a little bit of footage of Demp at work behind the tables, and he's actually talented. He does a nice old school routine, juggling and cutting "Apache." But that lasts for maybe a minute and a half, all told. The rest is just random, digicam footage of shout-outs and shows, where the quality is at the level where you can't even make out what they're saying on stage. And they keep throwing ultra-cheesy "DJ Demp" logos in giant blue letters all over the screen. Finally. Oh, Demp does remember to take a minute to tell us to go buy his mix CD, coming soon, though. Yay for commercials. it ends with Demp telling us it's "time for the afterparty," but we can't see that. He's saving that for a whole seperate "part 2" DVD. Ugh; shoot me now.

So, to sum up, DJ Demp has skills. And a DVD of him doing some routines would be cool. But I think even if Demp had an obsessed stalker, she'd be bored with this. There's just no content; just a bunch of quick cuts oc low quality footage of basically nothin'. They never even say what age he was turning on his birthday. :P

Finally, on a technical note, let me just say that the video quality is terrible! To the point where you can't read the titles on the screen; they're lost in a pixalated haze. Now, I noticed they had me install an updated (2.0) player, so I thought "hmm maybe it's Netflix." So I tried another random flick (You Don't Mess With the Zohan, because it was at the top of the top 50 list), and that had the same affliction... so it is Netflix! So I guess Netflix's instant viewing has gone to crap??