Talk about "Lords of Dogtown" here:
Review by: Breanne Derby
Plot Summary
Lords of Dogtown takes place in the mid 1970's in
Venice, California. This film tells the story of skateboarding pioneers Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, and Jay Adams. The film is based on the real lives of the skateboarders and their companions dubbed the "Z-Boys," but this film also added lots of fiction as well. The film begins with the jump-start of a new wave of skateboarding; skaters made the transition from clay wheels to urethane wheels. The boys then begin to enter competitions and were on the Zephyr Skateboarding Team (which is where they earned their title the Z-Boys) and their stories as skateboarding legends unfold.
Review
The young actors in this film did a good job of portraying the extremely contrasting personalities of Alva, Peralta, and Adams. It's hard to imagine that the real people actually acted like that and got along with one another. There was Tony, who was a bit arrogant and wanted fame and glory, Stacy, who had moral fiber and wanted a better future for himself, Jay, who was hardened by his life in Venice wanted a good future for his mom, and Sid, who was wealthier than all the other boys and just wanted to fit in.
It must be mentioned that Heath Ledger did an amazing job playing Skip, the Z-Boys' mentor (if he can be called that…) and the creator of the Zephyr Skateboarding Team. I have never seen another film where Ledger puts on such a convincing performance. He is constantly surprising us all with his talents. Though he first began being noticed for films like "Ten Things I Hate About You" and "A Knight's Tale," his career has definitely progressed into better films and he has given better performances. The Best Actor awards he received from several different organizations were certainly well earned (though many of them were for his performance in Brokeback Mountain).
One of the more disappointing things about this film is the fact that the character Sid (who was sort-of like a little brother to most of the Z-Boys) never existed at all. He was described as a "composite character" on the commentary, and different characteristics of his belonged to different friends of Alva, Peralta, and Adams.
Throughout the film there were cameos of many people including the real Z-Boys, the real Skip, and Tony Hawk as an astronaut. I caught the Tony Hawk cameo the first time, but not knowing what Alva, Peralta, and Adams looked like now and not being on the lookout for them in the film made me miss their bits the first time through.
The film itself was filled with surfing, hanging out, skateboarding, and the boys' eventual rise to fame. The friendship shown between the boys and the bond they shared over skating together in empty swimming pools during the droughts in Venice was really what the film was about. The sense of camaraderie between the boys in spite of their less-than-pleasant home situations and other obligations in life (like school) was certainly a strong one.
At the end of the film, there was a brief paragraph telling where each skater is now. I appreciated this information, as I found myself wondering where they were today. After watching the film, the viewer naturally wants to know what happened to the characters after the end, and the little epilogues informed me of just that.
As far as special features go, there were deleted scenes, but nothing really special there. During the credits there were extended clips of the "dogbowl" at the end, and there was video footage from the actual "dogbowl" in the 70's. There was also the option to run the film with the director's commentary and the commentaries of the real Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta.
Conclusion
In spite of the fact that this film is vastly fictitious and should not be taken as an accurate account of the lives of Alva, Peralta, and Adams, the film is not meant to be factual, it is meant to be entertaining. Personally, I did not know anything about the Z-Boys before I saw the film, and my skateboarding experience is limited purely to what I did playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater on Playstation. Until I watched Lords of Dogtown I did not even know that the Z-Boys existed. In spite of my lack of background on the topic of the film, I enjoyed it immensely. There was never a dull moment, and the audience saw not only the skateboarding side of the characters, but their home-lives as well. I found Lords of Dogtown to be an all around fun film to watch, and I would definitely watch it again.
