In the 1970s, a group of teenage surfers from a tough neighborhood known as "Dogtown" in Venice, CA pioneered a revolutionary new style of skateboarding. Riding the waves at the Pacific Ocean pier, the Z-Boys, known for their aggressive style and hard street attitude, combined the death-defying moves of surfing with the art of skateboarding and became overnight sensations and local legends. With empty pools as their canvas, the Z-boys paved the way to what is now referred to as "extreme sports," and created a lifestyle that spread infectiously to become a worldwide counterculture phenomenon. But all of this fame would take its toll on the friendships that they thought would last a lifetime as the sport that started out as an afternoon hobby turned into big business.
LORDS OF DOGTOWN, "inspired by the true story" from Stacy Peralta's documentary DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS, manages to turn an exhilarating documentary into a remarkably boring movie. The dialog is especially trite -- "Dude, I know," "I love you bro," and "This is our time bro." If they had said "bro" one more time, I was going to puke. Stacy Peralta, a famous skateboarder whose life, among others, is chronicled in this biopic, wrote the scripts for both films.
