HANGIN' WITH THE HOMEBOYS (1991)

Don't let the hip-hop title fool you. Joseph B. Vasquez's comedy about four wayward pals from the South Bronx comes on as a good-time party movie, but it's better than that. It's a low-budget knockout -- an inner-city ''Diner'' that catches the joshing, thrusting rhythms of urban male camaraderie. The film is set on one long, rambling night in which the boys -- two black and two Puerto Rican -- cruise their neighborhood and then venture into Manhattan. Vasquez has the kind of comic-dramatic film sense you've got to be born with. In some ways, the characters remain types, but the actors fill out their roles -- especially John Leguizamo, who gives the soft-spoken Johnny a furtive, soulful complexity. He lends an emotional credence to the film's message, which is that you have to help yourself -- not because some phony ''go for it'' triumph awaits, but because if you don't no one else will.

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