Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Skateland Blu-ray Movie Review

Coming-of-age ennui, ‘80s style.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater August 30, 2011

I think it’s official: our collective nostalgia for the 1980s—and our semi-ironic retrospective veneration of the “me” decade’s pop culture—has run its course. It’s done. Over. Exhausted. It was (mostly) fun while it lasted. Ray-Bans came back and indie bands rediscovered synthesizers. The A-Team got a 21st century make-over, and Hot Tub Time Machine transported us to the party-hard Reagan era in a Jacuzzi. Sure, why the hell not? I’m still trying to forget the why-must-you-rape-my-childhood horrors of the recent live-action/CGI Smurfs movie—and the ear-grating shrillness of Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel—but, by and large, the ‘80s revival gave us Cold War kids plenty of opportunities to look back fondly on the good times. What it didn’t give us, however, is any new culture, recycling old fashions, music, and storytelling tropes. In particular, there’s recently been a strain of distinctly John Hughes-ian coming-of-age teen drama/comedies that try to ape the style and attitude of the Brat Pack movies; I’m specifically thinking of Adventureland, Take Me Home Tonight, and Skateland. The latter will probably—hopefully—be the last of its kind. Skateland isn’t a bad film, by any means, but it doesn’t give us anything we haven’t seen before.

The setting is small-town Texas circa the summer of 1983, where 19-year-old Richie Wheeler (Shiloh Fernandez) exists in a kind of arrested development, putting off college in favor of working at Skateland, a waning, rinky-dink roller rink where the flashing lights and loud music can’t disguise the fact that there are only ever a few skaters making lazy loops on the polished hardwood floors—skating just isn’t cool anymore. It’s the end of an era, but Richie clings to the familiar—he’s just going in circles too—not sure what he wants to do with his life. He still lives at home with his parents and younger sister Mary (Haley Ramm)—who nags him constantly about university application due dates—but changes are on the way; his dad (Bredd Cullen) and mom (Melinda McGraw) are getting a divorce and the breakup of the family seems imminent.

To cope, Richie spends most of his time hanging out with his best buds, seagull-haired party-throwing rich kid Kenny Crawford (Taylor Handley), and Brent Burkham (Heath Freeman), a late-twentysomething pro motocross rider with a skeevy mustache and a dawning awareness that he’s getting too old to hang with high-schoolers. Brent has just come back after years on the dirt bike racing circuit, and he’s viewed as something of a returning hero, a perennial cool guy who never wants to get old or settle down. The three friends do a lot of partying, scoping out girls in Jordache jeans, and tooling around town in Brent’s black El Camino, but there’s a creeping sense that this might be their last great youthful summer. It’s time to grow up.

In the grand tradition of films about ennui-afflicted teens trying to sort out what to do next, Skateland’s narrative avoids rigid A-to-B plotting and drifts instead from one slice-of-life scenario to another, a collection of summer moments that span the emotional gamut from bliss to wistfulness to absolute devastation. Richie finally makes the move on his long-time crush, Brent’s sister Michelle (Ashley Greene), but their romance is short-lived; she loves him, but she doesn’t want to be with a directionless do-nothing who’s paralyzed by his own indecision. Another sub-plot involves the “Four Horsemen,” a quartet of redneck punks who have it out for Brent and his crew and show up at parties just to stir up trouble. Later, when the inevitable tragedy strikes—a moment that’s still jarring and unexpected—Richie is shocked out of complacency and forced to reconsider his life and priorities.

Skateland makes a few false moves—like an overly goofy montage where Richie interviews with three caricatured business owners—but the film as a whole has an earnest, likeably sweet tone. First-time director and co-writer Anthony Burns gets a lot right. The period details and production design are impeccable, the cinematography is warm and evocative, and the dialogue has just enough ‘80s slang to be believable, without ever coming across like the script is trying too hard. The cast is excellent. Shiloh Fernandez—who looks a bit like a young Joaquin Phoenix—has a loose swagger that suits the times, and Taylor Handley couldn’t be more perfectly cast as the luxuriously-maned rich kid who throws epic parties at his parents’ lake house. It’s Heath Freeman, though, who makes the biggest impression. As Brent, he nails the slightly pathetic sadness of the hometown hero whose big dreams have evaporated, who tries to live it up but faces the awkward realization that he’s getting too old to party.

What keeps the film from being better is that it seems so familiar, borrowing liberally from American Graffiti, The Last Picture Show, and Dazed and Confused. It also seems inconveniently similar to 2009’s Adventureland, which did more with the same rough premise and time period—a recent graduate in the ‘80s working a nostalgic dead-end job while he sorts out his life. The problem isn’t necessarily that the film sticks so closely to the coming-of-age conventions—these kinds of stories have been and will always be popular—it’s that Skateland doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from the pack. It certainly doesn’t help that the film arrived unfashionably late to the I- love-the-80s party that’s finally started to wind down. I guarantee that in the next year or two, the new trend will be Gen-X slacker-style stories set in the 1990s.

Skateland Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Skateland may be a low-budget production, but it certainly doesn't look the part, thanks mostly to cinematographer Peter Simonite, who gives the film a lush, warm, appropriately summery look. While most movies like this are shot digitally nowadays, Skateland was filmed on 35mm, and the 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer featured here is rich and natural, with no traces of excessive DNR, edge enhancement, or other unnecessary tweaks to the original image. The one noticeable fault I can see in the picture is the prevalence of a somewhat heavy intermingling of noise and grain during darker scenes, but this is hardly a deal-breaker. Clarity is strong; the image might not always be tack sharp—focus can drift a bit, and nighttime scenes seem a little softer—but there's lots of visible fine detail in most shots, from the fabric of Richie's yellow tank-top to the hairs of Brent's wispy mustache. Most scenes have a lightly golden, sunlit cast and all of the colors are rich, especially the vivid purples and blues in the skating rink. Black levels are equally dense, and contrast—with the exception of a few scenes where shadow detail gets crushed—is punchy without ever looking overblown.

Skateland Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Skateland features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that more than capably handles the film's restrained sound design. There's one car chase scene that offers a few cross-channel swooshes and pans, but other than that, this just isn't a movie that calls for big, bombastic sound effects. You'll hear the usual amount of quiet ambience in the rear speakers—party chatter, outdoorsy noise, etc.—but nothing particularly stand-out-ish. What the mix does perfectly, though, is music. The soundtrack is jam-packed with 1980s hits—from Blondie's "Heart of Glass" to Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown"—and it sounds great, filling every channel and even giving the subwoofer cause to throb with bass every now and then. Dialogue is clear, balanced, and understandable throughout, and there are no sudden drop-outs, hisses, or buzzes. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles.

Skateland Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (SD, 34:06): You get a sense from this half-hour collection of deleted scenes that the film probably went through a couple of revisions on the way to its final cut.

Skateland Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The '80s are out, and Skateland sends them off with one final warmly nostalgic, if never entirely original look back. While it's not quite as good as 2009s exceptionally similar Adventureland, the film is engaging and well-acted, with a last epic summer vibe that hard to dislike. Fox's Blu-ray looks great and sounds sweet, so if you're jonesing for a hit of feathered hair, NASCAR mustaches, and El Caminos, Skateland is worth at least a rental.