YEAH RIGHT! - DVD review

"Yeah Right," a product of Girl Skateboards, features a montage of clips of skateboard riders from across the country plying their trade in a variety of scenic, urban locations. The featured skaters have shots in a number of different settings, edited together at a frenetic pace to run through the course of a single song. In brief, I can tell you that if you've seen any skateboarding video, you've seen "Yeah Right" before. The grinds, the flips, the death-defying jumps are all here, and we're shown the results of a sudden loss of balance, concentration, or gust of wind in an excruciating crunch.

As I said before, each of the riders featured in this movie are given a very short tenure to establish what they are capable of on four wheels and a slab of pressboard. As I'm not familiar with the skateboarding culture, I couldn't tell you if the faces we see on this video are known commodities, but each of them has an impressive level of skill to pull off a wide variety of very complicated tricks, often in a long sequence. Famous names or not, these kids have some incredible skills. If you are going to buy this disc for tricks alone, I can tell you honestly that it will be money well spent.

The first half hour of the movie, under the direction of the quirky Spike Jonze and newcomer Ty Evans, is absolutely magical. Opening with a slow motion tracking shot of a selection of skateboard riders, I was treated to a simple display of the mechanics of a trick that goes so quickly that it could be completely unappreciated for difficulty if this weren't shown. Like each scene in the rest of the film, this slow motion sequence lasts for the length of a song and completely blew me away. The care and distinction, and almost superhuman or magical quality of the bit was brilliant, and I locked myself in for what I thought would be a highly-stylized look at this popular sport. Another sequence, this one featuring some tremendous riding from a skater who truly enjoys his craft, passes by and another interstitial vignette plays, this one reminiscent of the Nike basketball ads where the ball was passed from person-to-person who each did a brief trick before passing the ball. A skateboard invites a young man, sitting idly on a bench, to take a ride. He does, garnering a brief moment of pleasure from the board, before passing it on. That goes on, while we see some incredible passes and cuts, again for the length of a song. The vignette is absolutely wonderful. But that's where the movie starts to go downhill and fall into routine.

The next few skating scenes are much longer, and the vignettes separating them are more of the same, only featuring more skaters in less time. While there are a couple more neat bumpers between the skating scenes (including an incredible bit of filmmaking featuring invisible skateboards that has to be seen to be believed and Owen Wilson doing what he does best, talking, before ripping off a great move that had me sitting bolt upright and proclaiming "Owen got game!") most of the movie is just trick after trick with very little else of interest, and even tricks that would have impressed me in the beginning just become routine. It's like eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner… it just doesn't seem like a good desert after that.

And as great as some of the vignettes in "Yeah Right" are, some of them are just lame. One, called the "Skatrix" is homage to…well, you're not dumb. It's neat, but lacks the emotional punch or flattery of skill its predecessors possessed. There's another that's about a guy who's supposedly flashing people, but isn't… no point and not funny. In fact, it reminded me of a skit on Saturday Night Live…

If you read my review of ESPN's "Ultimate X" IMAX DVD, you'll know one of the reasons I thought it was so amazing was because it gave us a look into the lives of the guys we were watching, their injuries, their homes, and why they put their health on the line for a short thrill. But the characters of the individual skaters in "Yeah Right" are suppressed in favor of a nonstop trick rollercoaster ride. Even with the skater introductions at the beginnings of their run, I'm hard pressed to distinguish them afterward, so much so that they might as well have been anonymous. Even the two characters the movie bothers to set up, and by that I mean make fun of, are quickly forgotten in a torrent of tricks. The first, a 16-year-old skater from Boston hangs himself by his twig and berries on a rail, and muffs another trick after the filmmakers had harassed him about his age. Same goes for another rider, who seemed to be a head case after attacking a man he suspected broke into his car, and was called a whiner after he continued to complain about everything to anyone who would listen… it's all forgotten when he starts skating. That lack of characterization and lack of interesting vignettes made the last 40 minutes of "Yeah Right" drag pretty hard.

On the whole, I'd rate "Yeah Right" a solid 7 for skateboard fans, because you'll find a lot of incredible tricks to emulate and some great footage of excellent riders. For anyone else, I'd give it a 4 because the awe factor wears off very quickly and there is little to intrigue anyone who is not a hardcore sk8r phreak.

Video:
It looks like most of "Yeah Right" was shot either on digital or video source, because the quality of the video runs a gamut from passable to make-your-eyes-bleed-with-artifacts bad. The majority of the video is shot on the fly by a cameraman who skates alongside the performers, and considering the capture method, it looks pretty good. Night scenes look excellent overall, but where the issues come is the clear daylight. Compression artifacts abound, plus it looks like some digital grain showed up in the transfer, and it shows on still shots and there is a bit of blurring. Since the movie was shot by different people with different equipment in a variety of locations, the quality varies wildly, and I'm not sure any of this is the DVD author's fault, rather it's a limited source material. If you're really into the tricks, you probably won't notice the noise in the print, but even when I was enraptured in the first half, there were a few distracting moments.

Audio:
Unlike the video issues, the transfer of the audio is very good. Presented in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, the mostly-music soundtrack blasts through loud and clear. The songs, a mix of rap, new wave, rock, and punk (genre picked by the skater it's playing over) sound great and were a high point of the film when I started to lose interest in the action. There are some great tunes, and I was seriously digging the three Bowie tracks tossed in. The music is mixed with the scrapes, grinds, and cheers of onlookers that are routine in a film of this genre, and it all sounds just fine.

Extras:
The extra features on this DVD are segmented into eight categories.
Skatrix looks just like another segment of the Skatrix shown in the movie, only longer.
Roger's Intro is just the introduction he received in the movie, with a little extension in the middle, I think.
Owen is more of Owen Wilson b.s.ing with the skaters, talking about hypochondria and talking smack, inciting more action. It's just an extension of the scenes in the movie. He talks about tearing his ACL, and we get a better look at Owen setting up his trick.
Invisible Ramp. More tricks, followed each time by "OOOH."
Green Boards The tricks that were then used in the invisible board sequence, painted the color of a green screen to be edited out in post. I can't tell you more than that, because that's all it is, just the footage with the green boards.
Slideshow is a collection of still images of props, behind-the-scenes, action photos, special effects shots, and promotional photos of varying quality.
The Ads is another slideshow collection of the promotional advertisements for the film, one sheets, magazine ads, and movie posters.
And finally, the outtakes. Running about 25 minutes, the outtakes show the kids messing around with each other and it gives a better picture of who they are as individuals. And, as one would expect with a series of outtakes, we get to see some serious crashes and maiming not fit for DVD proper. Not to mention some random eggings, crazies and small animals wandering into frame, and a lot of f-bombs. Apparently the F-word also means, "I crashed."

Film Value:
"Yeah Right" is for the serious skate enthusiast only. It's not a documentary, rather it's a 70 minute highlight reel of nonstop skating. While I enjoyed portions of the movie, it grew old pretty quickly. The outtakes on the DVD really give a feeling of the making of the picture, the different people involved, and the collaboration of egos and talent. If you enjoy skateboarding videos, don't hesitate to add "Yeah Right" to your collection. If you're looking for a Spike Jonze movie, pick up "Being John Malkovich." "Yeah Right" is for the skate fans only.