Gleaming the Cube

I love Gleaming the Cube, with the exception of the coyingly senitmental dialogue going on and some of the forced grief by Slater. It's a pretty cool 80s action movie for skaters.

A kid mysteriously winds up dead after he goes poking his nose into questionable problems with shipping orders for the Vietnamese Relief. The cops say all signs point to suicide (or at least they're not conclusive of any other cause of death), but his skater brother is determined to prove that he was murdered. Gleaming the Cube, as Brian's (Slater) friend Yabbo (Perlich) explains, is about finding your place. A soul searching that is bound by no rules and standards, in other words. It's actually a pretty fun, if not different, story involving athletes, nevermind skaters. Although, I'm pretty sick of the super-patriotic themes. Plus, you have a few of the Bones Brigade cast in the main role (actually only Tony Hawk and Tommy Guerrero get lead parts) while the rest of the Bones Brigade took up stunt parts (Cabby and Rodney Mullen, most noteably). Plus, you have a pretty rad soundtrack, and Christian Slater and Max Perlich make believable teenagers, and entertaining ones at that (rather than obnoxious or totally stupid). Skaters saving the day? What could be better?

The music, the story, and the actors, it's a score! It's one of my favorite skating movies and certainly one of my favorite 80s movies.

It doesn't get any cooler than this. This is the best skate boarding movie ever. There are some really impressive scenes and the movie totally rocks. Its a bit old school now, but so what? It just adds charactor and proves that it doesn't matter how advanced technology gets, they don't make gems like this anymore. yep, they sure as hell don't! Check out Christian Slaters hair! Its awesome. And so's this movie. Heh, Sorry to sound like a air headed boy of 13. The only thing I would ever slamm this movie for was some of the acting. Christian Slater is cool, but there were some weak performances by others. This doesn't effect the movie on bit though! Hey, and it has Tony Hawk in it. The man! Need I say anymore?

2 very enthusiastic thumbs up, 10 out of 10

This is the story of a young confused high school punk who loses his adopted Vietnamese brother to a couple of gun runners. What is he to do? Well he could figure out who these people are and when he's frustrated, he could just skateboard while he's pissed. To lighten things up, he could hit on his dead brothers girlfriend.

There are many famous skaters who lent their abilities to this film. This does rank above the break dancing movies ('Breakin'')and the evil dancing movies ('Footloose' and 'Dirty Dancing') of the eighties, but I don't think it comes close to bike movies ('Rad' and 'The Dirtbike Kid')

Gleaming the Cube is the only half-way decent skating movie around. As far as cinematic art goes I don't know how I'd rank it, but as there aren't any others like it we'll just have to settle. The tricks are good, being that they're over a decade old and all and I have no real problem with that. After all, we can't progress if we don't know our history.

One of the first films of its kind that I had seen and is still really entertaining, after I hunted it down on DVD and watched for the first time last night for years. I like the portrayal of the skater guys. It frames their attitude nicely.

Slater's 'I miss you' speech was pretty cringing for me, but apart from that, the film carries itself really well without trying to take itself too seriously, and it comes off better for it.

The Corvette guy was a terrible addition in many ways, but despite being so bad, it was hilarious. One of those scenes where you'd say 'who would do that???' and then... 'who would carry on doing that after this?'... you'll see what I mean...