Larger text
Smaller text
Print
E-mail
Skateboarding 'Lords of Dogtown' wipe out
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Stars: John Robinson, Emile Hirsch, Heath Ledger
MPAA rating: PG-13 for drug and alcohol content, sexuality, violence, language and reckless behavior -- all involving teens
Masterpieces, all.
Stacy Peralta consecrated his youth as a 1970s Southern California skateboarder in the 2001 documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys," a glorification of the least productive and neck-riskingest skill of our time.
Watching it, you couldn't be sure whether he was trying harder to re-live his past or to justify the time spent perfecting his craft.
Those of us who saw it went on with our lives the moment it ended.
Peralta, who had co-written it with Craig Stecyk and directed it himself, went back to the drawing board and re-wrote the material as a commercial feature film, "Lords of Dogtown," with himself and his skateboarding buddies portrayed by young actors.
Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen") directed Peralta's screenplay, which ranks high among the decade's least necessary movies.
Set from 1975-77 in Venice Beach and other skateboarding hotbeds, it features the relatively level-headed Stacy (John Robinson) with buds Jay (Emile Hirsch), Tony (Victor Rasuk) and Sid (Michael Angarano) coveting admission to the Zephyrs (the Z-Boys).
The Zephyrs are a daunting team of skateboarders, led by the surfboard polisher Skip (Heath Ledger), whose arrogance is off the chart and whose blood alcohol level is up there, too.
It's not clear why he always seems more stoned than he does drunk. Were some substance-abuse scenes sacrificed to get a PG-13 rating?
A preview audience chortled at the guys' pervasive rudeness and their abuse of a hapless cop and a ridiculed restaurateur who's only trying to protect his business. Way cool, dude.
"Lords of Dogtown" doesn't have characters. It has a couple of pencil-sketched attitudes that are designed to fit everyone. The guys party as much as they skate, although the rollicking good times they seem to have make for miserable screen entertainment.
