Dogtown and Z-Boys

Infectiously exuberant documentary chronicling the '70s golden age of US skateboarding. Director Peralta, a member of the legendary Z-Boys team operating out of LA's Zephyr surf/skate shop, cuts between terrific archive footage and interviews with the survivors, chubbier and balder, 25 years on. While the gang might have been as seminal and cool as everyone keeps telling us, the relentlessly uncritical tone gives the project a distinct feel of blowing their own trumpets. Modesty, of course, had no part in this aggressively renegade subculture, and neither, it seems, did loyalty - Sean Penn's drawling narration blithely tells how the ingrate crew cut their Zephyr ties at the first whiff of fame and fortune. It's never less than compulsively watchable, as it unfolds to a soundtrack of suitably kickass contemporary rock, but Peralta's approach falls a little short of his dynamite material - like Almost Famous, the movie's MOR line on sex and drugs is prissily evasive, and the package ends up a little too MTV for comfort: conventionally unconventional.