Friday, December 2, 2016

Pokematic Reviews Lords of Dogtown

If it's not a good game or catholic...who do you call?...why Pokematic "hi."

Before I get into the review, I need to give a little background information on coming of age stories and 2 tropes that I HATE with the story. For those who had public education and never learned the 7 basic story plots, the coming of age story is when we see the protagonist go from a state of immaturity to a state of maturity after the events of the story, and part of what makes it good is that we can see ourselves in the protagonist to some extent regardless of how fantastical the situations are (though I might be completely wrong because I too never learned the 7 basic story plots in school). With this there are 2 common tropes that I absolutely despise. The first trope is "I don't get along with my parents, because I'm an angsty teen, and you should relate because you also have troubles with your parents." If the story tries to give a reason, there's never any real reason beyond "my parents are jerks to me because I get in trouble, and I get in trouble because I'm a rebel, for some unknown teen reason." First off, it's REALLY lazy; like, it's just conflict for the sake of conflict. Second, I've never had that problem. In my adolescence I got along really well with my parents, and that continued on into young adult hood. One good movie that does this is The Kings of Summer. It's about a teen who builds a house in the woods with his friends and they run away there for a month or so. The main teen runs away because he doesn't get along with his dad, for some unexplained reason. We see him causing trouble, just to spite his dad, then when his dad gets mad he gets angry with his dad. Everything else about that movie is great, except for the initial conflict.

The other trope that really grinds my gears is "forced out of the un-comfort zone" trope. This is the "I live a boring life working a job I hate but I'm used to it; it's my un-comfort zone. Then out of nowhere someone convinces me to leave my un-comfort zone in a drastic way, for some reason, and I see there's a wide open world out there. But in exploring this new world I get into some trouble and I realize I can't dive head first without knowing the water depth." Again, it's pretty lazy. Most of the time the character stuck in the un-comfort zone stays there for no explainable reason, like it never crossed their mind that "maybe I should try something a little different" or they're doing it as a means to an end (such as working a crappy job to pay for a car). It's always "I need to be stuck in the un-comfort zone so I can be pulled out of it." Then there's the "I'm going to drastically leave my un-comfort zone, for some reason." The film Cherrybomb comes to mind, again, a movie I like but botches the conflict. In it Rupert Grint is a strait laced kid who works a job he hates at a rec center, then out of nowhere some girl convinces him to be a wild teen and he goes along, for some reason. It's very forced and doesn't make for good story telling. Also, I've never been stuck in an un-comfort zone nor have I been thrust outside it to find a wonderful world, so I can't relate. Also, without going into a lot of details, this is one reason why I hate Catcher in the Rye; it does both tropes horribly. Holden doesn't get along with his parents, because "teen angst," which then thrusts him out of his un-comfort zone where he learns nothing. OK enough Catcher, back to the review. This is why I think movies have such trouble doing coming of age stories, because they need to cram 5+ years of maturing into under 2 hours.

So with that out of the way, lets talk about The Lords of Dogtown, and why I consider it the best coming of age movie I've seen. First I'll give a synopsis. The Lords of Dogtown is a movie about 4 friends and the cool surf shop adult who pioneered the sport of skateboarding, based on the true story of the founding fathers of modern extreme skating (according to the epilogue). It's a coming of age story with a little rags to riches thrown in. The movie opens with Skip (the surf shop owner) getting new urethane wheels and saying "we need to test these." He installs them on a board and takes it down to the local skate punk hang-out, what looks to be a school that's closed off for the summer. The teens (I'd put them between 16 and 21) are having fun and when Skip offers the new wheels for a test run, everyone loves it and we get a great montage of tricks. Skip then sees the money to be made in skateboarding, and wants to assemble a skate team.

This is where we get to know the main characters some. There's Jay, Sid, Tony, and Stacy (he's a male, this was the 70s when Stacy was a more unisex name, I guess). For the most part everyone is pretty much the same; there are some differences like Stacy has a job, Jay's mom is poor, and Sid has an inner ear balance problem, but everyone is pretty similar. Skip invites Jay, Sid, Tony, and some background characters to join the team. Stacy isn't originally invited to the team because he has a job, but after the first skate competition when he does better than Skip's Zephyr team as an independent, Skip makes him part of it. There's also a big drought happening so everyone drained their pools, and the team decides to sneak into people's back yards to skate the empty pools. It's a great montage.

Halfway through, the team gets famous, and sponsorships start coming in. This is when the 4 main characters really develop into different people. Tony takes the lucrative deal and becomes a "rock star." Jay doesn't take any of the big deals, and only takes modest sponsorships to pay for his mom's rent, but for the most part he just wants to be street and not sell out. Sid, from what I can tell, manages Jay's business aspects because Jay is not a business man and Sid isn't good enough to get sponsorships. Stacy stays with Ziffer the longest, but eventually he "plays for the majors" and gets a pretty sweet deal. And Skip just goes back to doing surf and skate shop things. I'll stop here because I don't want to go spoilers.

So what makes this movie so good? Well first off the cinematography is great. There's a lot of high speed scenes, because high speed skating. There's the 70s sepia filter applied to some shots (not a lot, but things are just slightly more yellow than normal). But then there's the believeability. I know "based on a true story" makes things believable, but even if it wasn't I could see these things happening and could see these teens as real people. Oh, and Tony Hawk and the real lords of dogtown make cameos.

But here's the real kicker, it does not follow either of the tropes I mentioned at the beginning. From what I can tell, no one has a bad relationship with their parents. Jay actually really loves his mom and does whatever he can to help her, which is why he takes the modest sponsorships in the first place. If it was just him, I'm sure he would have just done whatever he had to to get by, but he wanted to bring his mom out of poverty so he sold out as little as he could. He does rage a little when his mom's boyfriend leaves her, but he never saw him as a father figure, but more of a solution for his mom, and is angry that he left her and not him. Stacy and Sid from what I can tell have normal relationships with their parents, just normal "I'm going out with friends, love you guys" (as I walk out the door) sort of thing. The closest to strained is Jay and his dad, but that's more "I'm doing something dumb and my dad is punishing me rightfully so" than "I'm rebelling because I don't like you." Jay threw a little party because he wanted to celebrate being mildly famous, he smoked some, and was about to have sex while his sister was about to have sex in the same room with his friend Stacy. In that scene Jay and Stacy are throwing bro insults at each other ("I bet Stacy doesn't even have any hair on his inch worm") while trying to set the mood, with 2 of the 4 parties being related. It was a weird scene to say the least. But the dad wasn't all "I am in charge, I am a jerk, and I don't want you to have fun" sort of dad, he was "son I'm worried about the path you're taking, I don't want you to throw your life away" sort of dad. And later on, there's another father-son moment but it wasn't "see I told you so," but more "ask yourself, is this REALLY what you want in life?" Everyone has at minimum a healthy relationship with their parents; it's not the "I hate my parents" trope.

It also doesn't follow the "un-comfort zone" trope. When everyone is trespassing on private property to skate empty pools, there's no one saying "guys I don't feel comfortable with this," because in the beginning we saw everyone trespassing on closed off public property. It's not the "drastic change," it's just a next step. When everyone starts doing their own thing later on, it's not drastic because the seeds were already planted that "these are the next logical steps for these teens." Even with Stacy's job, it's not an "I hate my job" sort of deal, it's "I have to be somewhat responsible. Skating is fun, but it won't pay the bills," but then when skating can pay the bills, Stacy logically quits his job and skates full time on sponsorships. No one is stuck in an un-comfort zone and Skip doesn't pull anyone drastically out of their comfort zone. It's great story telling.

Before I end this, I want to leave one last thought before I go. At the end of this movie, I saw a LOT of similarities between the 4 main characters of the movie and the 4 main characters of Rocket Power, more so than "4 friends who like skating." I would say that Tony is Otto, Stacy is Reggie, Sid is Sam, and Jay is Twister. Tony is probably the most headstrong and best skater of the group (like Otto), and wants the fame and fortune that comes with being great (like Otto). Stacy has a unisex name (like Reggie), is probably the most mature of the group (like Reggie), and gets left out sometimes (like Reggie), and the way he gets along with Tony kind of resembles a sibling dynamic (like Reggie and Otto). Sid is the worst skater of the group falling down frequently (like Sam), he only got noticed because of his friendship with the others (like Sam), and the most striking is that at the end of the movie everyone is calling him Squid (like Sam). With Jay and Twister being left, there are some similarities. Jay rags on Sid somewhat (like Twister on Sam), he is a middle of the road skater (like Twister), for the first half of the movie he did just kind of go along with what Jay was doing (like Twister), but it's a bit of a stretch. I wouldn't be surprised if the Rocket Power kids were inspired by the Z-Boys, but I couldn't find anything really confirming that theory.

So Lords of Dogtown is a great movie. I heard that the documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is better, but I've not seen it and documentaries are a different category than dramatic fiction based on real events. Alone, it's a great movie. I highly recommend it. If you like extreme sports, or like Rocket Power, you will probably really like this movie. If you just like well told stories, you will probably like this movie. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

UPDATE: I have seen "Dogtown and Z-Boys," and wrote the review here. I didn't say which was better, because I'm saving that for later.

Oh, and if you want to see my out takes, here they are.

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