kind of loses its edge halfway through

Rating: 6/10 (19 February 2006)

It's not that this is a bad movie, by any means. It's good, and the first half of the movie gets a 9 out of 10, for how fun, crazy, and just flat out cool it is. But after Johnny Knoxville appears (I'm not knocking him, the downhill motion begins after his appearance), this movie just falls apart.
Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch - The Emperor's Club, The Girl Next Door), Stacy Peralta (John Robinson - Elephant) and Tony Alva (Victor Rusak - Raising Victor Vargas) are all the hottest skateboarders in the early 1980's California, in an area known as Dogtown. This movie is an actual story account of Stacy Peralta's award winning documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys. We meet the skaters, and their skate shop owner/sponsor Skip (believe it or not, it's Oscar nominee Heath Ledger), and their buddy who tags along after them, but never could skate, Syd (Michael Angarano - Sky High), we watch the skaters have a blast just skating, breaking rules, throwing parties, having sex, you know...doing 80's things.
After the competitions end, and Johnny Knoxville appears and signs Tony away from Skip, the movie loses its edge, which sends it to the ground faster than a skater after a busted rail grind. The actors also seem to lose their grip. Hirsch's character becomes flatly moody and angry, and you never see anything else. It's hard to believe Robinson's Peralta, because after a while, he just doesn't seem like a skater from the 80's. I don't want to know what could have happened had the real Stacy Peralta not written this movie and not been there to help Robinson. Heath Ledger is probably the only consistent performer in the film, but he doesn't have a lot of screen time. His performance is the real treat of the movie, a complete 180 from what we're used to from him. Victor Rusak's Tony Alva seems to be okay, but once again, he is very one dimensional, and this goes for all the characters until a crucial turning point where we learn something tragic about another character (don't want to spoil it).
This movie had a lot of potential, but just didn't live up to it as much as I hoped. I really wanted this movie to succeed, because of my personal attachment to the world of skateboarding through my friends and brothers (I'm kind of like Syd, because I can't skate to save my life). As I've said before, this movie is excellent for the first 50 minutes to an hour, but just falls off the table after that. It's a good rent at best, but Stacy Peralta's writing saves it from being a total bomb. Godspeed to director Catherine Hardwicke on finding another job after this one, because without Peralta, this movie sinks like a stone. If you listen closely to the narration, you'll know that Sean Penn narrates it. I recommend this to teenagers and middle aged adults that were like the characters, because you could relate to them.
6/10 --spy