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Review:
 When
he was a kid, Stacy Peralta was a slacker living in Venice,
California. He spent his time surfing and hanging out at Skip
Engblom's Zephyr Surf shop in the Dogtown neighborhood. Then he
discovered a new kind of wheel for his skateboard, which he and
his friends would use when they couldn't hit the waves.
He's never gotten the fact that he was one of the first
professional skateboarders and practically invented extreme sports
back in the '70s. This is, in fact, the second film he's made
about his glory days. Maybe he's finally gotten it out of his
system. Let's hope so, for this is one film too many on the
subject.
We meet Stacy (John Robinson) and his pals Jay Adams(Emile
Hirsch) and Tony Alva(Victor Rasuk) heading off to the beach one
early morning in 1975, they're typical surfer punks snarling
traffic with their skateboards [then a fad getting a revival] and
knocking down people's garbage. They fight with the older surfers,
who treat them like dirt, and hang out at the aforementioned Skip
Engblom's (Heath Ledger) surf shop. Then a guy comes with a new
invention, Urethane wheels, a rubbery plastic that changed
everything. It made skateboarding easier and more creative. Skip
decided that since the sport was getting a slight revival [I
remember falling on my ass too many times when I was seven during
the first time] and the kids were actually pretty good at it, he
decided to turn them into a competitive team.
This was how sports revolutions happen.
We get to see the homelives of some of the people. Jay's
mom(Rebecca De Mornay) was a burnt out hippy, Tony's father(Julio
Oscar Mechoso) thought his son and daughter Kathy(Nikki Reed) were
worthless slackers, and young Sid(Michael Angarano), the hanger
on, was uncoordinated. Aside from their talent, and their outlaw
outlook, there was nothing particularly compelling about these
people. Paralta portrays himself as almost a saint pretending to
be a sinner, and his character comes off as almost a prig.
Then comes the fame, and the money. There's the usual
conflicts, and the Z-boys fall apart. Soon they're all competing
against each other for major corporations. They all sold out,
leaving poor Skip in the lurch [he was trying to exploit them
too]. One of the flaws of Paralta's script is that he wants us to
feel SORRY for those poor kids who made all that money. Awwwwwwwww….
It kills the movie. Had someone better wrote the script,
perhaps this might have been a good flick.
Eric Lurio
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