Film review: Gimme the Loot (15)

Getting by with spray, scam and flimflam

Broke but not beaten: Tashiana Washington and Ty Hickson star in the indie comedy 'Gimme the Loot'

This fresh and freewheeling indie debut is a slice-of-life comedy in which we get to hang with Sophia (Tashiana Washington) and Malcom (Ty Hickson), a pair of feisty young graffiti artists from the Bronx, over the course of two hot summer days' worth of small-time hustling: selling and smoking weed, robbing and getting robbed, shooting the breeze and flirting.

Their company is eminently enjoyable; largely because of the performances, but also because of the characters' argot and linguistic exuberance. By the end of it you'll have been schooled in the surprising meanings of "stickage" and "Nantucket" and know what a "ghetto swimming pool" is.

Grainy rather than gritty, authentically scruffy rather than disreputable, and soundtracked by vintage soul, gospel and blues music instead of the hip-hop which would have been the more obvious choice, Gimme the Loot maintains a sunny disposition.

And because it's told from their level, it refuses to see its characters as victims of socio-economics. In fact, being broke in the Bronx has never looked so appealing.