Jonah Hill's debut film as writer/director is an admirable piece of awakening. Feeling like an offshoot of Larry Clark's seminal 1995 film Kids, Hill takes a page from their playbook to chart the fascination of a latch key kid from a broken home (his brother beats him & it seems there is no father figure while the mother is off doing something) who falls in w/a gang of skateboarders who take him under their wing & give him a crash course on the bad things in life (drinking, smoking & of course skateboarding) which gives him a sense of purpose & belonging. An impressive list of needle drops are heard on the soundtrack (I picked out The Pixies, Bad Brains & The Mamas & the Papas to name a few) coloring the background of this low res effort which is a nice stepping stone for future efforts. Good work.
