Corporate Line: Four skaters follow the summer tour of a skateboard star (Jason London) from Chicago to Oceanside, CA, pulling tricks and tearing it up, in their wild attempts to get noticed and grab a major sponsor and a chance to become stars themselves.
The Good: Mike Vogel is not a bad lead man as the wannabe pro, Eric Rivers. His gang of misfits is just the right blend of entertainment to make this film worth every minute from the dumb-ass Matt (Vince Vieluf) to the clean-cut Dustin (Adam Brody) to the ladies man Sweet Lou (Joey Kern).
Vince Vieluf starts off as being utterly annoying and turns into a fun-loving, yet lovable maniac. The best character by far is the understated pimp Sweet Lou played Joey Kern. He is hilarious without doing anything except dropping the line ‘wanna makeout?’.
I love skate films that weren’t on the mainstream level growing up from the Powell-Perelta Bone’s Brigade flicks to the latest antics of Bam Margera and his insane gang in the CKY videos. There aren’t many films that capture the real essence of skating, which is doing it for the love of it. Grind doesn’t make that move, initially, as it starts about the money of being a pro skater and as it moves to the end after all is lost we see that they do it for the love. As sure as you will be of the end there is something good about the message, don’t give up on your dreams. Dustin tells Eric that there are 98 pro skaters and a million wannabes like them – yet they still decide that there is room for a few more. It’s not bad when you can get some teens to sit down and watch a movie that is cool and throw a message inside it.
The Bad: Not enough skating.
Odd Footnote: Three of the four main actors all appeared in a movie called Grind in 1997 which incidentally had the same director Casey La Scalla. Even odder is the fact the films couldn’t have been further apart as the other is about trying to turn a quick buck in a one-time insurance fraud operation.
Frankly: This isn’t just a teen flick. It looks deceivingly so as the commercials do the film no justice. The biggest surprise is how the film isn’t all about skating – it’s about four friends bonding. No, it’s not exactly Stand By Me with skateboards and it doesn’t have to be.
+ Charlie Craine
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