‘Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off’ Film Review: Legendary Skateboarder Makes a Reticent Doc Subject
13.03.2022 - 00:11
/ thewrap.com
as an art form, addresses the interviewer with shining eyes and a kind voice. In an impassioned monologue that lends the documentary its name, he speaks about skateboarding with a kind of sublime reverence. Despite the bodily costs, he insists, “this is the luxury of having spent my life doing what I love.”“I’m not going to give up until the wheels fall off,” Mullen goes on.
“That’s what I’m made of. I wish I could relate the intangibles to you.”“Until the Wheels Fall Off” also struggles to fully elucidate its more abstract concepts: freedom, passion, perfection, fearlessness, gratitude, love. That’s not for lack of trying.
Jones, also the film’s cinematographer, has situated each of his subjects outdoors, often surrounded by green space, lending the project a much-needed sense of openness. The tearjerker of a score by Jeff Cardoni (“The Kominsky Method,” “Silicon Valley”) feels at home among the soundtrack’s many rock anthems. Though Hawk is not very forthcoming, other subjects, particularly the other pro skaters, are.
They try to explain the incredible, inimitable feeling that drives them, the euphoria that only comes from being brave enough to risk your life.In the same way that Bing Liu’s “Minding the Gap” appears to be about a group of skateboarding friends but ultimately winds up addressing masculinity, adulthood and the cycle of abuse, “Until the Wheels Fall Off” is a film that uses skating to access some of the bigger topics on its mind. But where “Minding the Gap” smartly focuses on those deeper issues, this film somewhat muddles them with standard biographical fare. It’s hardly a mortal sin.
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