PLOT: The true story of how a bunch of L.A. skateboard punks in the '70s took advantage of a water shortage, trespassing onto properties with empty pools and inventing radical new moves in the bowls. In the process, some of them became superstars, others casualties.
Though he's now only executive producer, it's interesting -- okay, scary -- to think what big-time director David Fincher would have done with the story of the Zephyr Boys from Dogtown.
For starters, when he was attached to direct, he reportedly envisioned a $70-million budget with FX.
It's only when you see the gritty, low-rent, digital-video approach taken by director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) that you appreciate what an abomination Hollywood could have made of a great story from its own backyard. Is there a lesson to be learned when somebody makes a much better movie on a tenth of the budget? Yes, but that doesn't mean the studios will ever learn it.
The story was already told in Stacy Peralta's acclaimed documentary Dogtown & Z-Boys, how Stacy and pals such as Tony Alva and Jay Adams became skateboard stars by honing their skills in empty swimming pools in water-rationed L.A. in the '70s.
They could have been just another subculture of slackers going nowhere (and in some cases might have been happier that way). Instead, they took 'boarding to a new level and unintentionally gave birth to a culture that now influences music, fashion and rock videos, and inspires events such as the Vans Warped Tour.
Not that Lords Of Dogtown is a history lesson. Hardwicke's movie (and Peralta's script) is a teen-genre movie, complete with partying, sex and zany escapades, amped up with decent acting, characterizations and the compelling angle of teenager who suddenly and confoundingly find themselves the next thing to rock stars.
The soundtrack -- Nazareth, Foghat, Black Flag, T-Rex, Iggy Pop, etc, -- is also pretty gnarly, though it ambles carelessly through the decade without regard to the movie's 1975 setting.
But what really makes Lords Of Dogtown work is the all-around calibre of the acting (and, of course, the skateboarding).
Screenwriter Peralta moves the point of view around, predominantly between him (John Robinson), Alva (Victor Rasuk) and Adams (Emile Hirsch). But it's the troubled Adams whose story rings most profoundly, reluctantly inspired as he is to become a pro skateboarder to support his alcoholic floozy mom (a scene-chewing Rebecca DeMornay), and Hirsch is magnetic in the role.
But if DeMornay gets to cut loose as a substance abuser, she's eclipsed by Heath Ledger as the tragicomic Skip, the owner of Zephyr skateboards, who organizes the little boardwalk rats into a team and then becomes the Broadway Danny Rose of Kahunas as they abandon him one by one for corporate deals. Ledger's scenes are a series of Jim Morrison-esque "look at me" booze-and-drug benders, the sort of scene-stealing that makes someone a sleeper candidate for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Lords Of Dogtown is true to its roots, and a pure buzz.
(This film is rated PG)
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