Disc Reviews

Lords of Dogtown Blu-ray Review

• 4th Dec 2016

There have been many decent films about surfing including Big Wednesday (1978) and Chasing Mavericks (2012), as well as fun family films such as Surf’s Up (2007) and action films (Point Break, 1991). There have been fewer decent films about skateboarding. Gleaming the Cube (1989) is perhaps one example. However, in 2001 real life skateboarding champion Stacy Peralta made the award winning documentary Dogtown and the Z-Boys. This was a good documentary that traced the origins of modern skateboarding and Peralta’s own story of skateboarding around Santa Monica, California in the 1970s. Peralta once again returned to the same subject in Lords of Dogtown (2005), though this time he wrote the script while the film was directed by Catherine Hardwicke.

Lords of Dogtown is a live action recreation of Peralta’s documentary that charts how a group of young testosterone fuelled teenage males with all the angst and hormones of growing up before becoming well known during the development of skateboarding as a sub-culture and sport before the sub-culture that it is today. The story opens in 1975 and focuses on three specific teenagers: Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk) and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch). Each come with their own teenage problems from girl trouble to parent trouble. They all live in the area known as Dogtown, a blue collar part of west Los Angeles near Santa Monica and close to the rundown Pacific Ocean Pier. These run down rusting buildings such as the old abandoned roller coaster loom large in the film like giant machines. The kids work and hang out at the Zephyr Surf Shop run by stoner Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) who takes them under his wing recognising their skateboarding skills and pushes them to enter competition. Each morning they make their way by skateboard to the ocean and surf to catch the waves. Entering into skateboarding competition, their unorthodox style causes some problems with judges while some of them win competitions and skyrocket to become famous until they find the trappings of even this 5 minutes of fame hard to handle. Still socially marginalised the gang begin trespassing on properties seeking out empty and drained swimming pools and learn to use the walls to hone their skills and so the skating park culture was born.

It is one of the few films that gives a good reflection of the time at the birth of modern skateboarding, but it never the less pales next to Peralta’s documentary. It also reflects the end of the surfing era, popular since the songs of The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean in the early 1960s. This is almost literally shown as Adams takes a knife to his surf board and smashes it up while a wasted Skip throws boards off the roof of his store in a rage during a party. Director Catherine Hardwicke had previously made the brilliant Thirteen (2003) but unfortunately Lords of Dogtown is too conventional as a coming of age drama next to her predecessor. The parental problems, an overworked and strict single father for Alva and the junked up sad, often half naked liberal mother (and old hippy from a previous generation) to Adams is almost clichéd in its contrasts and the drama that plays out as Adams tries to help her out. However, Rebecca de Mornay is in good form as the mother to Adams. Meanwhile, the characters in Hardwicke’s Thirteen were much more complex and stayed away from the clichés so obvious here.

The cinematography by Elliot Davis is grainy but colourful, giving an almost faux 8mm look to the film as it tries to capture the era. Meanwhile it is interesting that the soundtrack plays the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young and The Stooges, a whole generation before this film is set. The film does however set the scene well that the protagonists are trying to aim for an eternal summer break while leaving the viewer in no doubt that reality of growing up will hit them with a bump. The films best moments are undoubtedly the montage where the gang trespass the properties with pools.

Released by Eureka! on dual format, the disc received to review only had the trailer as an extra but there are also many extras on the released disc such as making of featurettes, deleted/alternate scenes and other documentaries (but sadly not Dogtown and the Z-Boys).

Chris Hick