Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Reviews Counted: 95
Fresh: 87 | Rotten: 8
Dogtown and Z-Boys is a colorful, exhilarating look at the skateboarding subculture.
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 2
Dogtown and Z-Boys is a colorful, exhilarating look at the skateboarding subculture.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 13,314
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Movie Info
In the mid-'70s, skateboarding was widely seen as a fad of the 1960s that had all but died out, except for a handful of committed fans in California. But that began to change with the emerge of the Z-Boys, a team of teenaged skateboarders who emerged from a decaying urban community in Santa Monica, CA. Hard-core surfers who sought to translate the hot-dogging stunts of world-class wave riders onto their skateboards began hanging out at the Zephyr Productions Surf Shop, a store that stocked
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All Critics (97) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (90) | Rotten (8) | DVD (20)
You want to know more about their private lives than you get. But most viewers may be too stoked by the sheer adrenaline rush of the subject to care.
Package is lively, if loosely structured.
This propulsive, highly satisfying 2002 documentary concerns a group of daredevil skateboarders from an economically depressed and dangerous area of Santa Monica known as Dogtown who reinvented the sport in the 70s.
Infectiously exuberant.
Top CriticFew sports films catch their time, place and sport so well.
This is pop history that blows your hair back.
Raw, baby, raw. That's what this documentary is, and that's why it's not meant for Blu-ray.
Before Tony Hawk, skateboarding had the Z-Boys.
Skateboard-legend-turned-filmmaker Stacy Peralta rips open the paradigm of the documentary form in much the same way that he and his young Santa Monica Zephyr Competition Skate Team revolutionized skateboarding in the mid-'70s.
Marred by a self-importance and heavy-handed assertion of mythic status that some may well find misplaced or just downright ridiculous.
I know exactly nothing about skateboarding, but this wild, exuberant documentary puts it all in perspective, outlining a crew of 12 surfers-turned-skaters who pioneered the sport -- and, some say, the art form.
If you're a boarding aficionado, this movie's your new best friend.
Using the Zephyr team's creation, its sudden fame, and death by defection, Dogtown documents genuine 20th century tribalism.
The straight cuts illustrate how the Zephyr team's revolutionary, riffing style was both an extension of surfing and aesthetically beautiful.
There is something I find deeply disturbing about a documentary made about one's own life that never acknowledges its first person status.
Quite possibly the best documentary about youth and sport since Hoop Dreams.
The film fearlessly gets under the skin of the people involved ... This makes it not only a detailed historical document, but an engaging and moving portrait of a subculture.
It's an entertaining study for anyone, as it makes you believe that skateboarding is the ultimate guerilla sport -- taking something that exists and is shrugged off and turning it into something amazing.
An enthusiastic ode to a few of the pioneers of extreme sports.
An affectionate look back at those heady days.
Despite its lack of perspective on history or the evolution of the sport, Dogtown and Z-Boys does what documentaries do best: It makes even viewers who have never touched a skateboard feel a part of the action.
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Documentary about the pioneering 1970s Zephyr skating team.
REVIEW
Waycool documentary by legendary skateboarding ace Peralta chronicling the origins of the original extreme sport with vintage Super 8mm home movie archival footage, black & white stills, and assorted media combining with a classic rock and roll score to form a comprehensive and obvious valentine to a way of life. Gravity defying gravitas is captured like lightning in a bottle showing the wayfarer scruffy charisma and authority-defying nonchalance that has a visceral thrill in watching underdogs become cult heroes. Excellent portrayal of unbridled angst, anomie and pure adrenaline rushes from curling on a wave from the prototypical surf in the Pacific Ocean to the concrete playgrounds of abandoned suburban pools. Narrated by perfect choice, Sean Penn, The Artist Formerly Known As Spicoli.