We Ride: The Story of Snowboarding

It's a difficult one - the history of snowboarding! A lot has happened over the past 30, actually 40 years, and it's an ambitious task to pack it all into a full feature film.

It becomes very clear very soon that the makers didn't have much information on their side. That's why they chose to rather focus on key people than the actual story. Unfortunately this is the moment when it becomes quite distorted - I assume the 1980's had more innovators than just Burton and Sims and I also believe that there have been more influential riders than Terry Kidwell, Shaun Palmer and Craig Kelly. In the first segment though there are some very interesting elements regarding things like halfpipe or early contests.

From the 1990's part on the storyline becomes pretty chaotic, switching focus very often without a visible connection. I'm missing a lot of key events and explanations about certain topics - instead the film assumes that the viewer already knows it. It also spends a lot of time just talking about how awesome snowboarding is but can't support the heavy statements with vital background information.

On top the production standards are pretty low which doesn't give it that big picture feeling and makes it hard to watch at some points.

If it had been called "The history of snowboarders" then it would have gotten 7 stars as it is more a collection of mini biographies than an actual history documentary. But with this premise it rather misses the point. Too bad!