Sk8 Life

I saw this at a local film festival yesterday (Shadows of the Mind). One of the guys who worked on the movie was from my hometown. I applaud him for his efforts, but this was a bad movie. The actors were awful and totally unbelievable. The story was just as bad. Most of the dialog consisted of "I'm down because I'm going to lose the crash-pad" "Oh well, that's sad. Hey, let's skate!" The only redeeming factor was the skating, but even that left me a little disappointed. Most of the tricks they did for this movie was grinds. I know they can be tough, but I wanted to see some sick air tricks. The biggest trick they did was grinding down this staircase. Now, I know Tony Hawk wasn't in this, but the main character is a skating pro, so I was expecting a little more.

Anyways, Just wanted to say that it was a very good effort, but could have been a lot better.

I downloaded the movie a few days ago and just finished watching it. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

As a thirty year old, chartered accountant and skater, this movie captures the essence of skateboarding and youth culture. I also could relate to the issue of aging that formed a subtext to the film.

The movie looks like it was made for nothing which works for the most part, other times not so much.

The animated sequences and visual fx were all well done and something I'd never seen in a skate movie or video before.

Not all of the performances were great (I think it was cast with real skaters), but come on it's a skater movie!

On the skateboarding front it's mostly flip tricks, ledges and rails (not my favourite) with a few pool and transition sessions in there too.

You also get to see someone do the longest round hand rail in the world, or so I'm told.

And yes, I also hate CAPS!!!

Let me start by saying, I liked "Dogtown and Z-Boys", and was looking forward to seeing a gritty skater drama. "Sk8 Life" has a bunch of skating action (some of it pretty good) but the rest of the movie is so bad that it's unwatchable. The dramatic crux of the movie is spelled out by the main character Kris: he is going to lose his house. Why? Because they can't pay the taxes, and the neighbors have complained to the tax-man. Why does this matter? Because apparently this is the only flophouse in all of Vancouver where itinerant skaters can find a couch to sleep on. The real problem is that this key dramatic point is uttered by the main character as exposition. This is the cardinal sin of story telling: he tells us, instead of showing us. That problem is inherent in the entire movie. In fact, the movie really just strings together a bunch of skater action-sequences with repetitive exposition. I mean repetitive. There are only three conversations that happen in this movie, over and over: 1) "We/You are losing the Crash Pad? Bummer. Let's go skating." 2) "I hate shooting video of skating. Let's go skating." 3) "I'm too old/lost my touch/cut my Mohawk. That sucks. Let's go skating." Repeat. Ad infinitum. No character arcs, no plot development. When characters stop skating and start talking, they inevitably mumble one of the three lines above. Nothing is ever on the line between these characters – they don't want anything, and even when the setup provides the opportunity for dramatic conflict, it's ignored. When "conflict" between characters erupts, we don't buy it and don't care, because it's just two people yelling at each other. The exposition is not only un-dramatic, and repetitive, it goes on way too long. Nothing would have been lost if this movie were cut in half. It would still have all the same dramatic problems, but it wouldn't be so interminably long. As for acting, Kris (the lead) has a good screen presence. If he was given something dramatic to strive for in any scene, he would have been interesting to watch. The rest of the cast are too young and self conscious to even fake their way through acting. The poor performances are not really the fault of the nonprofessional actors. The screenplay and the direction fail the entire cast, by not providing them anything to do. The actors seem lost in most scenes – they might have words to say, but nothing in their scenes "raise the stakes". They can't focus on what their character wants, and they can't react to other characters wanting something different, because these elements don't even exist in the script. The overall impression I am left with is having watched someone's home movies – painful, badly acted home movies. I was shocked to see that this movie got Telefilm Canada money, and was at Sundance.