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Review

Lords of Dogtown is the semi-fictionalized account of the birth of contemporary skateboard culture, an event also covered in the documentary film Dogtown and Z Boys. I guess this one is for the kids. Or maybe Tony Alva’s ego. Or maybe a practice run at screenwriting for Stacy Peralta.

Heath Ledger convincingly plays the alcoholic Venice Beach hustler, surfer and owner of Zephyr surf shop Skip Engblom. He, along with loosely bound crew of drug-addled employees and associates, such as the legendarily eccentric and talented skate photographer C.R. Stecyk, assemble the Zephyr skate team. They totally invented everything. Sick. Rad. Luminaries of the sport such as Stacy Perralta, Tony Alva and Jay Adams all cut their teeth under his tutelage. As is to be expected with situations involving youth, money, teenage girls and cars, the core member are lured away from their streetwise mentor by either by corporate giants such G&S or the drugs, gangs and hardcore punk rock prevalent in mid-seventies California urban culture.

Suspiciously, the back alleys of Venice beach are rife with makeshift skateboard ramps in the form of wall-leaning plywood sheets. The kids skate. The kids vandalize. The kids outwit the cops. They perform anachronistic tricks (perhaps writer Peralta takes license here to make the movie a bit more understandable in contemporary context) while carrying surfboards. If this makes you feel like you’re watching an hour and forty two minute long “After School Special,” just concentrate on the awesome skateboarding.

The soundtrack is spot-on. Hardcore punk wasn’t an option for adrenaline boosting in the mid-seventies. Instead awesome American rockers such as Foghat, The Stooges and ZZ Top fuel the shenanigans of these young gods.

As previously mentioned, the skateboarding is great. Lance Mountain and Tony Hawk both make goofy cameos but — behind the scenes — provide many of the stunts. Unfortunately, director Catherine Hardwicke weakness seems to be an inability to really delve in and develop her characters. But, with such sporty talent to watch, do we really have to care what these people are actually like? Just as a side note, it’s nice to see that Rebecca De Mornay is still getting work. She does a great job as the drug-destroyed mom of Crazy Jay Adams.

Many things the film gets right: Tony Alva is a complete prick and Jay Adams defined the beautiful, aggressive violence of the sport. But was Peralta really such a sad sack goody two shoes or did he just get to be that way because he wrote the movie?

All in all, very fun. Watch the documentary if you want to see the way it really happened. Watch this one, along with movies like Boogie Nights and Wonderland for the raucous, rock star life that is urban Los Angeles. At least according to that neighborhood around the corner: Hollywood.

 -- Mark Sconyers