This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The bones brigade was a slew of skateboarding dudes from America that took the world by storm in the eighties and then transcended into legends based on their radical moves. I kind of wish this movie was put in a different light though, the camera panning during the interviews is cheesy, and all the damn whining nearly drove me to insanity. It's like in the Metallica doc when Dave Mustane get's brought in by a shrink to whine to Lars Ulrich about being kicked out of Metallica twenty years prior. C'mon dave you only went on to form an even more awesome band MEGADETH, quit cryin! But he won't and neither do these guys. Hawk laments being such a "trickster" and playing second fiddle to Hosoi, Rodney Mullen just plain cry's the whole time and the rest of the team spit out sob stories while a roving camera creeps around them like a shark circling it's prey. Vice started a series years back called "Epicly later'ed" which is far and away better then watching this whole flick, people talk about their experiences and maybe sometimes someone cry's, but this flick really sent me packing due to all the waterworks. Enough. Rodney Mullen who's probably one of the most influential street skaters ever just cry's all the damn time, i've seen other little doc's about him and he's very emotional about his years skating and how he got there. This one could have been good i just hated the approach, it would have been better to interview these guys separately at their homes or at a diner, someplace other then a highly lit set with ten cameras. It just didn't feel organic to me. But that's the way a lot of Stacy Peralta's stuff is, it's either way to artsy (pick a bones brigade flick) or it's well crafted (dogtown). It's weird when you think of these guys being so cool and crazy just to see them wash up on the shores of shrugtown.

I grew up in the 80s worshiping some of the pro skaters like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, and Christian Hosoi. To finally have a documentary that chronicles the entire progression of skateboarding in the late 70s and through the 80s is something that has been missing up until now. I cannot tell you how compelling this documentary is. It's inspirational, touching, educational, and just downright interesting. For anyone who like skateboarding, this is a must-see. For anyone who's even mildly curious about the history of skateboarding, I would highly recommend watching this. The documentary focuses on Rodney Mullen, Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Tommy Guerrero, and Lance Mountain, along with their Bones Brigade coach/mentor/father-figure, Stacey Peralta. It chronicles the evolution of skateboarding in the late 70s and through the 80s, the development of tricks such as the ollie, the caballerial, the mctwist, the general climate and lack of acceptance of skateboarding, the transition from pool skating to other types of vert and street skating, the personal struggles some of the Bones Brigade team members went through, and the inspirational triumphs this group of young teens experienced in the 80s.

I was one of the many fortunate skaters to have grown up during this unbelievable era of skateboarding, and even though i had watched all of the Bones Brigade videos countless times as a young obsessive skater, I still found myself surprised by so many of the things that these groundbreaking skaters had to say. It has been a while since i found myself reminiscing about my own young teen years but this film made me do exactly that, a mixture of thinking about friends and the freedom that skateboarding brought. Even if you aren't a fan of skateboarding, do yourself a favor and watch this film anyway, it is truly inspirational!

I grew up at the same time as these people in the movie and I was hardcore into skateboarding just like all of them. I had to buy the magazines to see them all doing their thing though because we didn't have camcorders and youtube back then. Anyway, I happily paid my $20 clams to purchase an HD copy of the film and watched it on the edge of my seat like a little kid in a candy store. It did not disappoint :-) I had no idea there was all of this drama behind the scenes, that was a real eye opener. The skating is very cool and the interviews are dynamite and it was a very fun trip down memory lane for me. The film is very interesting and engaging even if you are not all that into skateboards. 2 Thumbs Up from me and thanks very much to Stacy Peralta and the rest of the riders and crew that brought this excellent film to life!