Cheesy melodramatic and very 90's. This best describes the movie I will be spotlighting today. We don't get fun, small budget productions such as this anymore. Harkens back to the simpler times where movies didn't take themselves so seriously. This is a little known movie outside the rollerblading and surfing communities.. In fact I didn't know anyone outside of my family who had watched this until almost a decade later when I mentioned the movie one Friday arvo at a pub and my friend Shannon Pobar, an avid surfer exclaimed that she loved the show! Finally I could discuss this with another human being.
The story premise is a pretty simple. It's the typical fish out of the water scenario where the protagonist Mitchell Goosen, played by Shane McDermott a native of Los Angeles gets thrown into unfamiliar environment and has to either sink or swim. Mitchell is your typical southern California teen, laid back Rollerblader who spends his day skating down the streets and surfing. His life is turned inside out when his tenured folks get a grant to travel down under to study the Australian wombat. To Mitchell's chagrin his parents decide to send him to Cincinnati instead of bringing him with them. They send him to live with his aunt instead. The scene where he awaits on a snow filled tarmac for his visa card, his surfboard. Priceless!
Mitchell bonds with his weird goth cousin Wiley, played by a very young Seth Green of Robot Chicken fame. He is a socially awkward teen who is a self professed hockey nut, as in Nintendo hockey. Mitchell gets into trouble the first day at school due to his cool zen outlook in life. He is a hit with the girls, but gets into trouble with the hockey jocks. All that talk about liquid drano and his SoCal lingo like 'chill brah' doesn't help his cause. Jack Black plays Auggie, one of the jocks who pokes fun at Mitchell's mannerisms and accent. Things come to a head when the preps challenge the leader of the group Jack and his team and they enlist the help of Wiley. Mitchell has to stand in for his cousin when he is knocked out as he has never played actual hockey in real life. Mitchell proceeds to lose the game for them by accidentally scoring for the preps.
His school life is turned inside out following this incident and he and Wiley get hit by a barrage of pranks daily. Mitchell's is almost at breaking point lamenting how he needs the smog and traffic in LA. His life takes a turn for the better after he receives his Rollerblades in the mail and goes on shred the rails, half pipe and stairs. He also meets a girl, Nikki and impresses her with his knowledge of plants. Things go pear shaped while they were out and a date and is rudely interrupted by the leader of the preps. Mitchell also finds out that Nikki is Jack's sister. He also chooses not to fight, going as far as to say no one is worth fighting for. He later regrets his actions but still refuses to resort to violence and instead finds a way to utterly humiliate the leader of the preps at a local roller hockey game. He wins over the jocks who recruits him to join a dangerous down hill race at a place known as the devil's backbone. He finally wins over Jack and gets Nikki back.
And there you have it, my Friday Flashback review. This is a fun family friendly movie packed with some great aggressive skating action from the pioneer of aggressive skating Chris 'the airman' Edwards and his Team Rollerblade skaters. Chris play one of the jocks and stands in for Mitchell when he does a soul grind on the rail, doing the McTwist over the halfpipe coping, and using the flatbed truck to jump down an intersection.RAD!
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