Review of Lords of Dogtown (2005) by Ola G — 14 May 2011

"Lords Of Dogtown" is based on the story of "The Z-Boys", an influential group of skateboarders who revolutionized the sport in the mid seventies. Set in the Dogtown area of Venice Beach, surfers Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk), Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch) enjoy the life of skating and surfing the pier with board designer and owner of the Zephyr surf shop, Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) and the other locals. Eventually Skip decides to put together a skate team, the Z-Boys. The team proves to be a success; winning many contests. And the boys choose different paths from there on..

I was hoping for a nice insight into the intriguing world of skateboard of the seventies with "Lords Of Dogtown". I remember the skateboard craze back then, despite being just a few years old. The first words that came to my mind when I saw the movie was, overacting and non acting. "Lords Of Dogtown" suffers severely from poor acting if you ask me. And in Heath Ledger´s case, overacting. I reckon the whole movie is not working out, because it is supposed to give you an autobiographical feeling of the 70´s, but it fails. Compared to "Boogie Nights" that succeeded. Despite some nice skatescenes. I reckon it was interesting to find out a bit about Alva, Peralta etc, but I think I rather had seen a proper documentary about The Z-Boys. Nah, this is not working in my book. A disappointment.