Without an intact marriage or trusted authority figure remotely in sight, “Lords of Dogtown” is above all things a movie about the ideal family.
It pretends to be about skateboarding, about fame, about Southern California, about a subculture. But because director Catherine Hardwicke understands the joys and fears of teenage life, her accomplished film explores the search for a safe nest as thoroughly as it defends the right to take flight.
Hardwicke’s adolescent skate-heads drink, toke, have sex and punch referees. What they most long for, though, is someone they believe in to pat them on the back or guide them out into the open air. America’s concrete jungles are no place to grow up without a lucid parent or loyal friend.
Hardwicke and screenwriter Stacy Peralta succeed with their yearning tale even as they race through the engrossing story of the 1970s boy-kings of hardcore skateboarding. “Lords of Dogtown” vividly recreates the lives of Peralta and his Venice, Calif., buddies, as they invent the street tricks that revived skateboarding and created alternative superstars with big-buck endorsement deals.
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Peralta told parts of this tale in “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” his popular 2001 documentary. But grainy home video can’t go inside the broken homes that produced a generation of anti-hero athletes. So he wrote down the unvarnished private moments of pioneers Tony Alva, Jay Adams, Skip Engblom and himself, eventually finding Hardwicke to turn his documentary into faithful fiction.
Heath Ledger as Engblom steals the show from his younger champions, playing the Zephyr Boys’ mentor with trippy aplomb. Engblom ran the surf shop that sponsored the boys’ groundbreaking skate team, and a substance-enhanced Ledger alternates between encouraging the boys and exploiting them.
Engblom was tortured, a free spirit never quite able to surf away from responsibility. Thanks to Ledger’s skills, we can see awe give way to envy behind Engblom’s sunglasses.
“Here’s our entry fees, now where’s our trophies!” shouts Engblom as he leads the boys into their first competition. Afterward, in a celebration at a diner, Engblom gives a profane speech that offers his skaters a reassuring flash of paternalism.
Ledger’s performance might be lost if the young cast wasn’t convincing enough to fuel his hazy greed. But Hardwicke, a surfer herself who lives on Venice’s prime Dogtown block, chose actors who could sell the skate.
John Robinson of Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant” is a spooky reincarnation of Peralta, his blond hippie hair contrasting sharply with his attitude as the most straitlaced Z-Boy. Victor Rasuk as fame-loving Tony Alva plays up the playboy, but an edginess to his good looks helps him stay real when the neighborhood needs him. Emile Hirsch may be the most impressive as rebel Jay Adams, shedding the doughy inertia of his “Imaginary Heroes” role to recreate a genuine skate punk.
A side benefit is the chance to watch a new sport and a new kind of celebrity invented from the asphalt up.
This may never happen again – brave kids spinning around drained swimming pools not because cameras are watching, but simply because they can. These days, ESPN2 would be on the Z-Boys before they could swap out their first set of worn wheels. We are no longer a culture where kinetic creativity develops unseen, at its own pace.
Hardwicke’s storytelling feels a bit padded in the second half, influenced too much by the formula of breakup-and-reunion mythologized for us by VH1. But we linger through the end to see the outcome for our concrete rebels, and we’re rewarded with the knowledge that many of the Z-Boys helped make the movie.
They still skate, they still surf, they still see each other. They still fight, and still trade crazy-stupid ideas.
Almost like a family.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
“Lords of Dogtown”
***½
PG-13 for language, drug use, sexuality and some violence|1 hour, 40 minutes|Directed by Catherine Hardwicke; written by Stacy Peralta; starring Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsch, John Robinson, Victor Rasuk and Nikki Reed|Opens today at area theaters.
