Movie Review: Lords of Dogtown

Lords of Dogtown

Something like Lords of Dogtown is not usually "my kind" of movie. But the trailers I'd seen combined with the fact it told a true story I quite literally knew nothing about was attractive, and so I went. While it's not the best movie I've seen, it was also far from the worst and I learned a little besides. In more reviewer-type language, it's worth a look.

The Lords of Dogtown are a few young skateboarders who live and play in Venice, California. Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch), Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk), and Stacy Peralta (John Robinson) are great admirers of the older and infinitely cooler "Skip" Englom (Heath Ledger). The trio often sneak out of their homes early in the morning and ride their skateboards to the pier in the hopes of catching some early morning waves with Skip and his surfer friends. On a typical morning, the older men make the boys perform a variety of chores before the "allow" them to take to the water themselves.

The boys suddenly become much more important to Skip when he receives some new-fangled wheels in trade for some work he's done at his Zephyr surf shop. The wheels are made of polyurethane, and when attached to a skateboard in place of the original wheels, they allow a skater to "surf" on land. Skip tells the kids they can now make the same sharp turns and other moves on their skateboards as they do on the ocean waves, and he excitedly decides to form a competitive skateboard team to let the boys do just that. Skip's motives, of course, have little to do with the boys and a lot to do with the money he thinks he can make manufacturing new skateboards with the new wheels himself. But the boys don't care. Not only are they now working with the man they've looked up to for so long, they're skating on better boards and challenged by competition. Even hangers-on like Sid (Michael Angarano) go along for the ride when pretty girls and sycophantic fans begin to show up everywhere the team does.

As the boys coalesce into the Zephyr team, their already formidable talents are enhanced by the sanction to practice regularly as well as the better equipment. The more contests the boys win, the more skateboards Skip sells, which should make everybody happy. Unfortunately, other factors are involved which undermine their success. Jay's mother (Rebecca DeMornay) is a chemically dependent and emotionally needy woman who loses a boyfriend Jay likes because, he tells Jay, "Your mother's crazy." Tony's father is doing his best to raise his son and daughter Kathy (Nikki Reed), but his "best" all too often includes berating the children, particularly Tony. Stacy, meanwhile, is the only boy who has a job, and his sense of responsibility all too often causes him to be the butt of jokes by his friends and harassment from Skip. And Skip himself proves to be both jealous of the boys' success and self-destructive when others try to horn in on what he views as his team and his creation.

In the 1970's, I was growing up in a small town in northern Minnesota. It was a real revelation to me to see just how different that same time period was in Venice, California, and how alien the kids and the world of surfing and skateboarding was to the things I knew at the same age. The clothing and the music, however, brought back memories, and the film seemed to be quite authentic in its look and its presentation. The gritty realism of the film and the story certainly have something to do with the director, but it's likely that even more is owed to the screenwriter: the real Stacy Peralta himself. Tony Alva and Jay Adams also cooperated with the making of the film, and the actors selected to play the three bear a surprising resemblance to early photos of the real "Lords of Dogtown."

The acting is largely quite good (though Johnny Knoxville's "Topper" Burks is a bit over the top), and the sets are excellent as is the costuming and make-up (though I wasn't fond of Heath Ledger's prosthetic teeth). The primary problem that I could see involved some shortcomings in the script likely contributed to somewhat by the editing. It's not that the script was bad, it's that it seemed to have some disjointedness to it. That may very well be because Peralta is telling a story that's so familiar to him that the gaps don't exist for him — his own memories automatically fill them in. For the rest of us, though, there are some spots where a little more connecting information might have been helpful. Still, the story itself is compelling, and the skateboard stunt work is awesome (the actors did much of their own skating, but the most spectacular stunts were done by professionals) which makes Lords of Dogtown worth the price of admission.

POLITICAL NOTES: The city of Venice's "solution" to the problem of certain "undesirables" hanging out at the pier is chilling. It's also an indicator that our problems with such politics and politicians weren't born of the "greed" of the 1990's. What it even more poignantly highlights is the fact that we've looked at things like this for more than thirty years and have either condoned it or failed to do anything about it.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Lords of Dogtown is rated PG-13 for "Drug and alcohol content, sexuality, violence, language, and reckless behavior, all involving teens." If your child is inclined to try to duplicate everything he sees onscreen, he's too immature to see Lords of Dogtown. I'd also not recommend it purely from a content standpoint for those children under the age of 12 or so. But for older kids, Lords of Dogtown shows what determination and hard work can accomplish (even from kids who aren't inclined to work on much and who face some almost overwhelming odds) and could provide a few object lessons as to the hazards of excess. And for adults, the movie offers a glimpse into our relatively recent past that will bring back the memories both good and bad of what those times meant for so many.