The tough, gritty streets of “Dogtown” in Venice, California didn’t look like much to outsiders, but to a handful of teenage surfers in the 1970s they were the hard, winding, sloping inspiration for a revolutionary style of skateboarding. Transferring the aggressive wave-riding moves to concrete from their death-defying surfing skills at the Pacific Ocean Park pier, the Z-Boys -– mostly kids with rough home lives and rougher attitudes -– became sensations, local legends. They were freestyle wizards on urethane wheels, turning empty pools into arenas of wild, beautiful athleticism, the genesis of today’s “extreme sports.” Skating competitions didn’t know what to make of them, girls threw themselves at them, and suddenly marketers and promoters wanted to grab a piece of them and what was fast becoming a worldwide counterculture phenomenon. But would the friendships of this tightly knit group last as a teenage pastime turned into big business, and energetic personalities became out-of-control celebrities?

The movie can be described in one word and one feeling ehhhh, The movie just wasn’t that entertaining or fun, it was like a hour and half lecture on fighting the power and opposing the oppression of the work force. I mean the Z Boys were suppose to be the original boys of summer, all about having fun and doing what they wanted but the movie made them out to be snotty little brats who got entangled in the world of greed and corporate sponsorship. The movie should have stuck to the original story and not tried to impress so much with all the skateboarding and surfing tricks which honestly were not that good. What it left was a very shallow story about a group of teenagers that turned on each other the moment money was in the offering and finally got back together with the tragedy of one of their friends.

The acting in the movie could only be described as very poor, that’s what happens when you hire a bunch of pretty boy actors who are on the young side. Even Heath Ledger who is suppose to be an A List actor did not do that much to impress. Heath Ledger came off more as creepy then someone who was trying to support of fight the system lifestyle for the Z Boys. Emile Hirsch, John Robinson, and Victor Rasuk came off as vanilla flavored as they were very bland and did nothing to make you want to run off and live the lifestyle of summer. This movie was obviously geared towards the teenage crowd who do not really expect that much of a story or even that good of acting. Rather just being impressed with a group of teenagers who did manage to change the rules and in the end found their summer, but the movie itself was very vanilla and ehhh.
2.5 stars out of 5