“The Lords of Dogtown” (Columbia Pictures)
“The Lords of Dogtown” is the story of four young men who fashioned the skateboard craze in California. A monumental achievement Hardly. The basis for a good movie Never happen. The story, the actors and the entire movie sink like a stone as this story of a grungy group of slackers fails to interest anyone. This is the type of movie some critics will hail as a masterpiece while others will say it is just hell to sit through.
Stacy (John Robinson), Jay (Emile Hirsch), Tony (Victor Rasuk)and Sid (Michael Angarano) are friends. They love to surf and they love to skateboard. Their big kahuna is a wastrel named Skip (Heath Ledger) who owns a shop that makes surfboards and skateboards. He sees a chance to field a team of skateboarders and then sell his product so he gets each of the boys to skate under his brand.
As the boys get more and more popular and as they make more and more money problems arise, none of which is very interesting. Since you don’t care about any of the four, you could care less about their problems.
The acting is okay but none of the four young men make much of an impression, while Ledger is totally bizarree as Skip. But he looks like an angel compared to Rebecca de Mornay’s performance as Jay’s wasted mom. De Mornay may be going for a realistic look here but she ends up just looking ancient and scary.
The film is rated PG-13 for profanity and violence.
“The Lords of Dogtown” is the kind of movie that makes you wonder who is running the studios in Hollywood. It also raises the questions (1) Who in their right mind would greenlight such a project and (2) why would anyone ever give director Catherine Hardwicke another job after she guided this fiasco.
“The Lords of Dogtown” is a dog of a movie that hopefully will quickly fade into the surf and sunset of California never to be seen or hard from again. I never thought I would see a movie that would make “Grind” look like good moviemaking.
I scored “The Lords of Dogtown” a bow-wow 3 out of 10.
