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Well, dear readers, the lateness of this particular review is hardly our fault. You see, the powers that be at Warner Brothers sort of tied our hands with this one, as they released the trailer less than a week from the film's release date. It seems like a foolhardy strategy for a film bold enough to pose the philosophical queston "Skate or die." Having watched the trailer in its entirety several times over, I admit it was a very close choice between the two. Some might argue that allowing only a few short days to build some buzz for Grind is an unwise, even negligently retarded move. In the case of this film, however—which, as I mentioned, asks us to look deep inside ourselves and choose whether we will skate or die— there are several good hypothetical reasons as to why the trailer was released so late:
With some or all of these factors in place, it would seem sensible to hold the trailer's release back even longer than they already did, showing it only after the film Grind has left theaters a week from now. That way people have already seen the film, blocked all memory of the horrific event, and will be desensitized to any further reminders of the film's existence. As it stands, we got less than a week of Grind trailers before the film's release, allowing me to actually peruse some reviews of the film proper before reviewing the trailer. The reviews I read were exceptionally telling: "Grind, surely excreted from the lowest concentric circle of the bowels from Down's Syndrome hell, manages to actually make the viewer progressively stupider as he watches, dragging everyone in the room into a rapidly declining spiral of idiocy until they shit themselves seventeen times, as I did." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times "Even we can't condone this, and we get paid to like EVERY movie!" -Entertainment Tonight "Call me crazy, but I liked Grind! I don't know if you've seen Loni Anderson lately, but at fifty, the woman is still spectacular! Call me a senile, ugly old lunatic, but I pushed a woman under a bus yesterday and watched her die. If Grind got released ten times, you could color me ten times pleased. Sometimes I don't even know why I'm still alive. " - Larry King, Larry King Live
Actor Vince "I made up my last name by headbutting a typewriter keypad" Vieluf adds some meat to his supporting role by acting immensely stupid…TO THE EXTREME!!! His character wears a tuque throughout the movie, presumably as a buttressing medical tuque to keep what's left of his brain from falling out after years of violent skatebaord-related head trauma. His madcap antics include riding down a highway on a toilet on wheels; getting "violated" by a lizard; and saying "man" at the end of every sentence, regardless of its relevance. Yes, while one of the nondescript younger skaters is ostensibly the main protagonist of the movie, there's no questioning who the real star of Grind is: utter, unrelenting crapulence. As the characters wind their way through whatever obstacles semi-professional skateboarders need to overcome—feelings of embarrasment? The need to re-evavluate their wasted lives?— they indulge in all kinds of gross-out scenarios. Or, at the very least, they try to do so. Grind is so inept, however, that they fail to even meet that low bar. Witness as a domino-like tipping of multiple porta-potties results in…the last one not tipping! Then a really fat guy gets out! Is that even legal in bad, gross-out comedies? Not according to the California Statute of Bad Teen Films, which clearly states in s. 3, subsection 47: "Should
contact be made with any form of portable toilet, where Mind you, a blatant disregard for the traditional rules of Hollywood could make an actual decent film far more interesting than your usual formulaic Hollywood fare. In the case of Grind, however, it's not so much a clever and innovative bending of norms at play; it's the fact that the filmmakers just seem aware that they're even making a film. The result is a movie that anyone with intelligence is predestined to hate, featuring a group of characters that anyone with intelligence is predestined to hate, played by a bunch of actors that anyone with intelligence is predestined to hate. Sure, they show a lot of cleavage in the trailer— but one would think that a skateboarding comedy would (in addition to said cleavage) contain measurable amounts of skateboarding and/or comedy. According to Grind's trailer, there's very little of either. Instead, we just get a few sparse shots of leaping skaters, interspersed with painfully unfunny dialogue. Coming back to that
eternal question: "Skate... or verily, die?" I would have
to say that, given the shockingly small amounts of actual skating going
on, Vieluf and company are leaning towards one happy end of the spectrum.
RATING: |
"Boy,"
you're probably thinking. "Those guys at the Trailer Trash have
really missed the boat on this one. They're reviewing the trailer for
Grind, a film that's already in (and God willing, already out
of) theaters."
Grind
follows the path of a couple of Sk8r Bois as they try for their last
big chance at competing in a Very Special Skateboarding Tournament
Of Some Kind. They are joined in their quest by a midget and another
guy who is inexplicably but undeniably in his mid-30s. Though it did
exceptionally well up till now, the movie manages to lose its grasp
on realism, as anyone stupid enough to still be preoccupied with skating
at age thirty would clearly have succumbed to natural selection by suffocating
on the plastic bag his Happy Meal toy arrived in by now.