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. 