Thrashin' - Clean up Venice Beach, please

Sure, its just West Side Story with skateboards but its....uh....hmmmm. I guess that's it.

What you've got here is your classic tale of boy wants to win skateboarding competition, boy meets his rival, boy meets girl, girl is rivals sister, boy and rival skateboard joust with bean bags in a burning drainage ditch, boy blames girl, boy beats rival in downhill skateboarding competition, rival and boy become brothers in law and America is united. That ol' joint, you know.

So if you're a skateboarder or someone who enjoys watching skateboarding, you're gonna prefer Gleaming the Cube over Thrashin'. Here the skateboarding is pretty sub-par for a film about a sport (aside from the pool competition that appears to be helmed by Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk). What Thrashin' does right though is ratchet up the corny cheese to about 50. The dialogue is so bafflingly terrible, the "tough" guys are comically fancy, And time after time, the characters make hilariously stupid decisions and then throw hissy fits about their actions. It was not a good look for a budding subculture in sports at the time and very far from what the culture actually was. I mean, nothing is more about fellowship and a communal love than skateboarding. Yet, here comes Tommy Hook and his band of ne'er do wells sabotaging competition because they came onto their turf.

Come on! Skateboarding gangs?!?! And they have turf?!?!? That they presumably acquired from actual gangs....you know...the kind with guns?!?!? Its so preposterous. Whats next? Xanadu skaters conquering Times Square???

Its so incredibly stupid that you can't help but love it and its a pure riffers paradise. Drop in and do it.