Lords of Dogtown (2005)
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
Written by Stacy Peralta

Stacy Peralta enjoyed an enviably cool adolescence, sure. The kind of adolescence most of us try to convince ourselves ours was sort of like. But he already told us about it with Dogtown and Z-Boys. As well as a few books on the subject. With Lords of Dogtown, Peralta risks turning into the Ancient Mariner, telling and re-telling his tale to whomever will listen, forever and ever.

It's not so much that Lords of Dogtown was unwarranted, or even that it's bad – it's just that it should be a lot cooler than it is. Perhaps the constraints of a PG-13 rating resulted in the overly airbrushed treatment of the story, but even the "unrated" DVD version plays more like a theme-park ride than the degenerate haze the real Z-Boys undoubtedly lived through.

Heath Ledger is great, director Catherine Hardwicke gets the details right, and the cameo-crazed casting will surely please skateboard aficionados and/or pop culture whores. But the script and performances are pure afterschool-special (kids from broken homes discover extreme skateboarding, rise to fame, experience the carefully-cued downfall, and rediscover the meaning of "friendship").

Given that Dogtown and Z-Boys told exactly the same story, Lords of Dogtown really needed to be more of a decadent, Boogie Nights kind of thing than, like, an episode of "Instant Star."

Review by Pansy Shipley