So I want to start snowboarding because my cousins snowboard and it looks like a ton of fun. I decided to watch this documentary just to learn a little more about it.
The documentary overall is very informative. There's a lot of good information and awesome snowboarding shots… More
So I want to start snowboarding because my cousins snowboard and it looks like a ton of fun. I decided to watch this documentary just to learn a little more about it.
The documentary overall is very informative. There's a lot of good information and awesome snowboarding shots that were pretty cool to watch. However, I think this documentary is a little TOO informative. Instead of taking one aspect of snowboarding and focusing in on that, this film takes a whole bunch of different aspects of snowboarding (e.g. disabled snowboarders, girl snowboarders, dangers of snowboarding, corporate sponsors, snowboarding tricks, etc.) and shows multiple perspectives (e.g. pro snowboarders, inventors, casual riders, olympic competitors, etc.) on each sub topic. It's way too much. The topic for this film is "What is snowboarding?" which was the main question asked at the beginning of the film. That was a really broad topic to go with, and who really is the target audience for that? The film deviates from the definition of snowboarding throughout the film, but somehow manages to get back on track near the end. If the movie had gone with a more specific topic about snowboarding (I would've gone with the young riders trying to go pro to help them get sponsored...) then I think this documentary could've been really amazing.
The topics featured in this film were really inconsistent. Each sub topic was either lightly touched upon or completely explained in full on detail. Abe Teter's family, for instance, was featured for a long, long time. I really didn't care who Abe or his family were, how they work out, how long they've been riding, etc. It went into full detail about his life and his sibling's life and it got really boring. On the other hand, when the film focused on the dangers of riding and what can go wrong, it was pretty short and wasn't informative at all. I basically was told that snowboarding is indeed dangerous and a bunch of riders broke this and that by doing some trick. I didn't really get to find out much about how dangerous it is. There's no safety tips or anything mentioned in the film? I think I learned more from reading an issue of Transworld Snowboarding for 5 minutes then watching this for 90. Also, why were there like 100 wipeout shots? Yeah they were pretty sick, but that was a lot of unnecessary footage. Like yeah, I get it--people aren't perfect.
I wish this documentary was a little more organized. It was pretty much a jumbled up mess with flashes of badass snowboarding shots scattered throughout.