Lords of Dogtown Reviewed

The newly articulated mission of this blog is to review any and all media I view. Lately I have felt a great sense of loneliness and despair, and while this feeling has haunted me since those first moments of adolescence when I developed self awareness and with it the frisson on ennui, I am lately thinking it it because of the prolonged hours of sonic assault and glossy eyed gazing at screens.

The idea is that perhaps I will think twice about the media i consume if I know I am going to have to do a write up for every Late night with Conan O;Brian episode I self medicate with to pass the tedium of life. First up is the 2005 film The Lords of Dogtown, the true true true story of the the volatile Zephyr team and the rise of competitive skateboarding in Southern California. In no way did I enthusiastically seek out this feature, it just meandered its way up my Netflix queue until the darn thing found its way to my mailbox yesterday. The film didn't make much of a splash when it came out in June of 2005, but now one of its' stars, Heath ledger, is dead. So how fucking sorry do we feel as a nation for not appreciating him when we could? Huh America?
At one point Mitch Hedburg enters to deliver the fateful polyurethane wheels that will set the skate movement in motion, pun intended. At this point I literally yelled "Oh my god, everyone in the shot is dead now! This particular shot is cursed! Oh wait, there is a guy in the background, two thirds of this shot is cursed! " If I remember correctly, Mitch Hedburg died in January of that year, so he had already passed upon the film's release. The fact that this is his only scene makes me think that this is actually his ghost, returned from the other side to deliver this film's all too mind blowing catalyst. Then perhaps his ghost hung around the craft service table, doling out his trademark dry irreverence. "So I like supposed to say polyurethanes, but every time I say Polly, I just feel the need to say 'wanna cracker.'" Pause for laughter. "Call that a force of habit." Of course I'm wrong, he actually died in March 2005.
So anyway, those guys are dead, so lets appreciate the time we have left with Emile Hirsche before he is claimed by The Lords of Dogtown Curse, because this young man is off the hiz-ook.
I don't know if he skated before this but he is 100% effective in convincing me that he is both one of the worlds best skaters, and his agility is the manifestation of a brooding intensity to rival Brando in a street car named desire. The kid's got it I tell ya!

So anyway, the movie tells the story of how these young, troubled street urchin/surfer kids formed the Zephyr skate team and transformed competitive skating from something resembling figure skating on a board to something resembling awesome. As their coach, Heath Ledger flips out and punches so many people that I assume he just did this as a nervous tick every time he would forget a line. Remember when Courtney Love was pretty good as a drug addicted whore in The People Vs. Larry Flynt but then every was like, hey, but she really is a drug addicted whore, that doesn't count. Lords of Dogtown sort of validates the idea floating around that Ledger OD'd because he couldn't deal with his own intensity. He's edgy I tell ya!

So anyway, the sole writing credit goes to Stacy Peralta, and while I'm sure there were no script doctors involved, kudos to him for making his character the whiniest, prettiest of the bunch who never got the love he deserved. Actually that was sort of annoying, kudos revoked.

Obviously the guys become dicks and use their money to indulge in the most cliched fashions and drugs of the era. The film ends with an old school reunification where the guys decide they still like each other. The film doesn't go as far as the era in which their aerial, surf inspired style of skating would go out of popularity in favor of a grittier street style but it does foreshadow this in the most heavy handed way possible; the guys are walking down the street, fighting or something, when a punk band literally blasts through the wall of their concert and spill out into the street. If your smart like me, you know that they didn't just rock so hard they knocked down a wall, they actually punked straight through the fabric of time because the guitarist is wearing a Black Flag t-shirt, brace yourself, 4 years before Black Flag existed! That's some anachronistics for your ass.
So, if Jar Jar Binks is a 1 and Boba Fett is a 10, I would rank Lords of Dogtown about a Lando Calrisian. I think it got a bad rap for not being as good as the documentary on the same subject, Dogtown and Z Boys, that came out a couple years earlier. It makes a nice companion piece to Point Break as an example of a female director trying, and for the most part succeeding, to prove that she can make a film more testosterone soaked than most male directors, and using extreme sports and Southern California as her pallet.
Oh and did I mention Tony Hawk plays an astronaut? High-liarious.