As the use of 3-D becomes increasingly prevalent in the multiplexes, the debate continues as to whether the process is (a) a valid storytelling device, (b) the most important cinematic advance since sound, (c) an increasingly played out gimmick, or (d–z) just a way to make it impossible to make camcorder bootlegs. Still and all, though, it's hard to deny the base, goose-bumpy charms of objects detaching from the screen and heading straight toward your face. ESPN's X Games 3D: The Movie certainly meets its quota of money shots but has precious little else going for it. Featuring interviews from the likes of Shaun White, Travis Pastrana, and Ricky Carmichael, it's a slick, fawning, shamelessly commercial puff piece that occasionally hits on an eye-popping image and just goes sick.

Taking its cues straight from the Warren Miller playbook, director Steve Lawrence's documentary consists of occasionally exhilarating snowboarding and dirt-bike footage mixed with a bunch of friendly, tatted-up guys mouthing the same old tired aphorisms about believing in yourself. Matters are not helped by Emile Hirsch's mumbly narration, which ranks just below Dirk Diggler's documentary in Boogie Nights on the hyperbolic scale.

Moments of shuddery, gravity-defying Zen aside (no matter your feelings about the validity of the sport, watching a guy launch a dirt bike 35 feet straight up into the air is undeniably impressive), the film's pacing is uneven, with enough slack passages to make you wonder why you got off of the couch and put on the glasses in the first place. But then there's the third-act introduction of the Mega Ramp, a 75-foot-tall, football-field-dwarfing skateboarding leviathan seemingly designed to make people's organs fly out of their bodies. Watching willing participants (including one who—and this is not a typo—previously jumped over the Great Wall of China on a skateboard) hurl themselves into the void inspires abject terror, dumbfounded admiration, and vertiginous Wile E. Coyote yelps of disbelief. I love you, Mega Ramp. recommended