User reviews

I had the fortune of seeing this movie in 1997 when a friend rescued it from a bargain rack at a video store. It's kind of a staged documentary on Stacy Perallta that has little scenes with a girl(girlfriend) thrown in to give it a narrative feel. Freewheelin' is a charming look at the simpler days of the sport - before sponsors and big money took over. You won't see any vert tricks in this movie. Having said that, you get the same kind of feeling watching Freewheelin' as you would get using an abacus while the calculator lies across the room. Freewheelin' is full of integrity and genuine excitement for skateboarding on the verge of the next.

I saw this movie when it first came out and thought it was a fair representation of Stacy and his family. I was not aware of his skill as a skateboarder until after seeing this film. After seeing Dogtown and Z Boys and Lords of Dogtown, I now want to see this film again. I have known Stacy and his family all of his life and am very proud of what he has accomplished in parlaying his skateboarding prowess into a most successful career. I admire his contributions in promoting skateboarding safety and will always be indebted to him for both performing for the students at Burke Jr. High in Pico Rivera, CA and urging the kids to use safety equipment while skateboarding and for sending one of his teams to perform at Rivera Middle School in Pico Rivera, CA. I worked at both schools and Stacy accommodated my requests. This was after I saw Freewheelin' and my students were very impressed with Stacy and his fame. He has certainly been mindful of his roots and contributing to the safety of aspiring skateboarders.

What I really liked about the film was that it contained a scene with his mother that really made the movie real for me. I also liked the scenes that showed some of the early competitions of downhill races before the boys mastered the inverted ramp skills that were so evident in "Dogtown and Z Boys" and "The Lords of Dogtown.

In summary, I would like to say that the presence of Stacy Peralta in this and subsequent films has made skateboarding much more acceptable to the world of sports. this activity as a world wide accepted sports activity.

'Freewheelin' is sort of a skateboarding documentary, or more specifically, a peak into the early days of pre-mega stardom Stacey Perlata, former Zephyr team skater. The movie is narrated by Camille Darrin who is either Perlata's best friend or girlfriend (and whether her relationship to him is fictional altogether in order to give the movie some sort of traditional narrative, we are not told). She travels around with the film crew to various California destinations with his friends, Tom Sims (founder of Sims skate and snowboards), Ken Means (one of the few freestyle rollerskaters), Mike Weed, and others. And, we are presented this from the filmmakers who likely had the expectation that their audience would primarily be the pre-teen crowd who might take an interest in the burgeoning sport. It's like something you would see some afternoon on Reading Rainbow or something.

While films like 'Skateboard: the Movie', which came out around the same time (and featured fellow Z-boy Tony Alva) followed a traditional narrative for it's skateboard themed movie, 'Freewheelin' looks like a primitive version of skate demos that soon, the Powell/Peralta brand would innovate with the Bones Brigade (i.e. Search for Animal Chin, Public Domain, Banned, This is the Bones Brigade, etc.).

For the most part it is ridiculously boring and cheesy, thanks in large part to the unnecessary input from Darrin and the utterly lame soundtrack. However, fans of skateboarding might find this movie valuable with its ample footage of old skate styles that pretty much have become non-existent with the standardization of skateboarding. Recall in the Dogtown and Z-boys documentary, Skip Embloom, Jeff Ho, and others continuously talked about style, something that was probably lost on us new generation of skaters. A term so oft used in the documentary, I thought it was just more self-congratulatory mechanisms, but 'Freewheelin' makes it clear what they mean.

In the film, for example, we see a downhill slalom event organized by the local skaters for fun. Depending on what activity the skater learned prior to skateboarding, we see exactly what those in the Dogtown documentary were referring to. One guy was a pro skier before learning how to skateboard, so he always skateboarded with his feet together (something possible to do on the old days of narrow skateboards and fat wheels). Peralta was always able to maneuver with intense speed in slalom because he always skated using the ball of his foot rather than his knees to move from side to side in and out of the cones. And still others, who were long-time surfers like Peralta before becoming skateboarders, skated with an entirely different stance and method of adjustment. Tom Sims, a surfer, rode longboards in the pool (I didn't know this was possible) and always put his weight on the back of the board for shift like he would if he were surfing. (Not to mention that there is a loss the more technical terminology about skateboarding maneuvers like 'torque.') This is really something lost on later generations of skater where that was the first sport they approached. No background in surfing or skiing or whatever to influence a difference in styles. Now, it's really just a matter of 'goofy foot' or 'regular stance' being the distinction.

So, the movie is incredibly lame with all the background discussion about Perlata working at the restaurant or having to deal with school and stuff. Once you get into a lot of the straight skate sequences (which is pretty much the entire middle part of the movie), then you've really got some eye candy before you. Makes me really miss the old days of skating and wonder, what will be the next evolution of the sport should the popularity of street skating ever wane? I think is a film to be enjoyed particularly by skaters of the old style or skaters who at least loved watching others skate the old style. You get a little visual history lesson, if nothing else.

What is sad about this documentary is that it isn't recognized as what it is... a historical view into the skateboard revolution of the late 1970's. People seem to want to compare it to the Stacy Peralta film "Lords Of Dogtown", which is a cool movie about skateboarding "life", but "Lords" fails to reveal the fact that Orange County, California, was the real source of skateboarding innovation, news, and growth.

Skaters in this film, obviously 30 years before Stacy decided to do his own film, is real footage of skateboard pioneers and pros like Skitch Hitchcock, Mike Weed, Ty Page, Kevin Means, Bob Jarvis and others. These guys didn't live rebel lives breaking into people's homes to skate anonymously in empty pools, but they worked their magic and pushed it out for millions of kids to see through contests, exhibitions, and offhanded shoots with Skateboard Magazine, which was published in Orange County.

In skateboard contests, magazine coverage, and overall presence, the skateboard heroes of Orange County, Calif. actually helped create the movement to make skateboarding what it is today. They are featured in this film. If they don't say something deep and inspirational, that's because they were kids focused on trying to do a full revolution in a cement pipe 20 feet in diameter. They were trying to beat each other in stand alone 360 spins, testing skateboard designs, competing in contests, and contributing to skateboarding in positive ways. Stacy Peralta's film is a tragedy of the collapse of the personal lives of Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta and Jay Adams. Nice plot line, but not the truth of the growth of skateboarding.

Skateboarding's roots were in South Orange County, California, not Santa Monica, California. FreeWheelin' is a movie that shows what is was like, raw, no drama, just the REAL players in skateboard history making the moves to push skateboarding to what it is today.

Anyone who watches this film and compares it to the professionally edited, drama-enhanced scripting of Lords of Dogtown are being fooled into thinking that a poignant biography of a few screwed up kids who skateboarded were the driving force behind the skateboard revolution. They weren't.

The guys you see skateboarding in Freewheelin', as boring as it might look to guys who weren't there, are the real pioneers of skateboarding and how it has transformed into the powerhouse sport it is today. This film is a study in history and is a must-see for all skateboarding fans.

I've never been on a skateboard in my life, and I've never had any desire to. Neverless, I do see the skill involved with the sport, and after seeing how "Skateboard Madness" portrayed skateboarding as an exhilarating sport even to someone as disinterested in the sport as I am, I though that "Freewheelin'" would provide some of the same satisfaction. After all, one of the skaters in that movie - Stacy Peralta - appears here as well.

Unfortunately, what I liked in "Skateboard Madness" is almost completely missing here. It's incredible how boring the sport is presented here - most of the skateboarding footage consists just of people speeding down hills, or going up the sides of empty pools or water pipes in slow motion. Wow, great excitement! (Sarcasm). There is no passion, no love for the sport displayed by the participants or by the people behind the camera - that's what made "Skateboard Madness" work.

As well, there is a problem with when the skateboarders get to talk. I was looking forward to this, because this is one thing that S.M. didn't do, and I really wanted to hear what the people of this sport had to say about their passion. Unfortunately, they come across just like the typical cliche of skateboarders - a bunch of "Awesome, dude!" kind of long-haired youth who blab about what "exciting" technique they did in terms that the ordinary person would not be able to understand. They also seem to eat, breath, and sleep skateboarding, which kind of makes them one-note, without any distinct personalities. Except maybe for Stacy Peralta - he comes across as an arrogant, egomaniac-like jerk. In fairness, quite a bit of this comes from the scripted sequences, where he commanded by the script to do things like drop out of school, neglect his girlfriend, etc.

You'd be better off looking at "Skateboard Madness". Though that movie is hard to find, it's a lot better, and certainly easier to find than this nearly-impossible-to-find obscurity.