Chicagoverated
The first 'part' in the movie is Appleyard, Dollin, Aaron Suski, Caswell Berry and somebody else skating around (there are about 20 tricks) interspersed with random shots of African wildlife and a random African tribe dancing. It's as cool as it sounds. Then, the song changes to tribal drumming and everyone sessions a three foot quarter. Just when you think it's over, you get more shots of people who live in run down parts of Africa, and then a mini ramp session in the middle of a field. Dollin does a few rad tricks, and there is a cool part in the middle where Lewis Marnell is filming him, and then Dollin takes the camera and films Marnell. Marnell is pretty tech but it's obvious Dollin is filming for someone else who is taking all of the good shots he gets. For a movie that claims having lots of new and innovative spots, I saw a lot of the same Barcelona spots I've seen a million times before; especially in Dollin's part. The groms section is next, and has the burliest tricks in the video. Some kid does a backside flip off of a 15+ foot balcony. The vert parts (Matt Dove and Rune Glifberg) are all filmed with everything except the ramp and the skater on a green screen, with random stuff in the background instead (Clouds, black and white super 8 film of a lava lamp, etc). It's cool until you realize vert skating is kind of boring to watch. One of the more creative parts is when they take a ride on the Goodyear blimp and scope out abandoned pools. You see about four tricks here before they go onto the next part. Talk about wasted potential. The closer part is Rowley, which had me stoked at first. I was also stoked because I heard Tom Penny makes a cameo. Too bad it's a mini session. It's a cool looking mini, with pool coping on half of it and it's built in the middle of a forest, but it gets mundane after a while. Rowley does some unbelievable tricks, and Penny does a crazy line, but you can only watch people do variations of blunts for so long before it's just boring. It's not that I don't like Volcom (I'm wearing a pair of their jeans as I write this), and it's not that I don't like mini ramps. I just think they tried way hard to make this movie fit Volcom's image and didn't spend enough time putting thought into editing it. Then again, maybe because it's art, I just don't get it. -Ian Browning
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Volcom
has always made questionable moves. Charging 80 dollars for a pair of
jeans, pushing their clothes in malls across the world, trying too hard to
be artsy and having half their clothes ending up looking weird, and most
recently, releasing their latest skate flick, Chichagof. (I know this was
released a while ago, but I'm always behind in the skate world). With the
exception of The Garden, I've never been impressed by Volcom movies, but I
was told that this one was sick. Whoever told me that was lying.