Film Reviews

Lords of Dogtown

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Emile Hirsch
• Details: US / 107 mins (12A).

Back in 2001, Stacy Peralta directed Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about how Jay Adams, Tony Alva and Peralta himself became skateboarding pioneers back in the early '70s. Lords of Dogtown is a self-important 'factional' version of that documentary, scripted by Peralta and directed by Catherine Hardwicke, and that well-worn phrase 'let sleeping Dogtown documentaries lie' springs to mind. The story, such as it is, follows the rise and rise of Team Zephyr skateboarders from the sport's origins as a poor man's version of surfing to the mega-budget commercial concern it is today. It's probably not giving away too much to say that Peralta (Robinson), Alva (Victor Rasuk) and hardcore skater Adams (Hirsch) go on to become legends, but what's fascinating about Lords of Dogtown is how the sport and its corporate sponsorship evolved in synch; this being America, fun automatically equals business. Heath Ledger has great fun playing Team Zephyr head honcho Skip as if he's aping Val Kilmer playing Jim Morrison in The Doors, all dirty-blonde dreads, zonked out eyes and half-drawled non sequiturs, but with the exception of the demonic-looking Emile Hirsch, the young cast of unknowns has all the charm and acting talent of the average surfboard, so artificial they don't even qualify as wooden, but fibre-glass. Add to that the tiresome overuse of the brain-dead sub-language beloved of Southern California's radically gnarly dudes, and it all adds up to Shagg and Scoob doing Barrel Flip Kaspers for the kids. Man.

Review by Declan Burke