A story about young people struggling to overcome the darker side of the neighborhood. Rashad Swann (Tip Harris) comes of age and takes responsibility for himself and his brother Antwone (Ross) to move toward getting out of the hood. Rashad meets a great girl named New New (London) with a secret that almost costs them their relationship. Antwone gets involved in dealing and suffers from a boss that isn't very understanding. Rashad and his skating buddies spend their time at the Cascade roller rink competing in skating events in preparation for the annual skating tournament that they've won several times. The main characters are all pretty likable and the dialog was a good compromise between reality and prime time TV. They even had an old timer speaking some Jive. You won't find an abundance of emotion from the righteous characters, but it is well worth seeing. Even with all the daily troubles, it doesn't leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

Rashad (T.I.) lives in Atlanta with Uncle George (Mykelti Williamson) and his little brother Ant (Evan Ross). Rashad and Ant go to school and work as janitors with Uncle George. Rashad's life revolves around his friends and the local rollerskating rink Cascade. He is taken with New-New (Lauren London). His best friend Esquire needs a recommendation letter to get into the Ivy Leagues. He befriends wealthy John Garnett (Keith David). Ant gets into trouble selling weed.

The filmmakers have a love of Atlanta and its black culture. The filmmaking is a little bit ragged but the cast brings an inner truth to these characters. T.I. is a compelling presence. The easy sense of these characters do eventually wear thin. There is an aimlessness to the plot. The movie really needs a direction and a drive to get there. This is more of a slow jam. It is great at giving a sense of the people. It does need work on the story. The uncovering of Erin leads to some awkward drama in the relationships. I don't really understand Rashad's reaction. The melodrama seems pushed.

ATL tells the story of four best friends about to graduate and shows their life stories as they grow up and hang out with each other. Despite this movie not being one that you would take too seriously, i thought the story about 4 friends moving on after high school and resolving issues at the local skate ring they always hung out at was a decent idea, and the acting was actually pretty good. T.I. as the lead character was pretty good. This is not a movie to be taken very seriously, but for what it is, it does a decent job capturing Atlanta's hip hop scene and a lot of the drama that is involved with the kids out there. It shows the real hood part of Atlanta and i guess it demonstrates it well. Also many people don't know that "skating" is actually a trend in some hip-hop parts. Many critics I've read from said the skating was really weird or other negative things. The story is good and it kinda seems like a true story. I also found Big Boi to be funny in this, along with the other group of friends. In my opinion the IMDb rating is underlooked and underrated, comparing this rating to rottentomatoes- there is a difference