Bad boys who were good on the bottom

Rating: 8/10 (11 October 2014)

I was intrigued by the rawness of this movie. How the young boys lived for surfing, then turned to skate boarding when the new type of wheel was invented. It was touching to see how they struggled at home, how they found meaning in skating and in friend ship and having something together that was on the side of society. Then fame came, and I must say Jay, played by Emile Hirsch, was a bit intimidating. He didn't seem to give a damn, and I didn't like the way he stole Stacy's girlfriend, although I liked him better later in the movie, because he never gave in to fame and he never sold out. Late on in the movie we saw that things just turned out the way they had to, and that was comforting. In the end, the movie left me with a good feeling, even though one of them died from brain cancer. I really liked how Skip kept on making boards, but his shop being taken over by someone who knew how to run a business, and I liked the end scene, where the boys reunited in the empty swimming pool, grudges forgotten, just having a good time. It touched me, and I was left with a feeling that I had witnessed the birth of a new youth culture. We all know how trend setting it became and all that developed from it.