Movie reviews: Old is melodramatic, but there are enough thrills to make it time well spent ctvnews.ca - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from ctvnews.ca Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
When Mikey Alfred announced his plans to make a feature film, people thought he was crazy. Their doubts stemmed from the notion that Illegal Civ was only capable of creating skate videos and short movies specifically for YouTube, and that a full-length film about becoming a pro skater wouldn’t appeal to a mainstream audience. But then Alfred and IC finished
NORTH HOLLYWOOD and the project took off; it was fully backed by the community, championed by the likes of Pharrell and Tony Hawk and finally picked up for wide release.
“We wanted to get the film out traditionally and got turned down by everybody,” Alfred told HYPEBEAST Diaries. “They also told me ‘you’re psycho for trying to make the main character white and you’re black,’” he added, “and it’s like, what if we just want to make a movie?”
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A brief moment of silence washes over Illegal Civ’s Ryder McLaughlin, Aramis Hudson and Nico Hiraga when they’re asked the first question. It’s as if they’re respectfully giving each other the space to strike first blood, patiently waiting to listen to each other’s answers and have an in-depth discussion on their thoughts. Separated in both a physical sense Ryder and Aramis are in Los Angeles while Nico is in San Francisco and by their individual video call windows, Nico addresses the question to an unsuspecting Ryder and the three break out in giggles. “Why me?” Ryder asks, attempting to shield his smile with his hand. As he gathers his thoughts to answer, the tension unconsciously dissolves into virtual air, and it feels like we’re initiated into a brotherhood that’s similar to the one their characters share in Illegal Civ and Mikey Alfred’s debut feature film,
The one-minute clip begins with Michael (Ryder McLaughlin) burning the tips of his shoelaces as he and his friends, Adolf (Aramis Hudson) and Jay (Nico Hiraga), get ready to skate in a school. A security guard, portrayed by
Workaholics alum Blake Anderson, tries to stop them from skating and filming on the property but is properly foiled by Adolf as he blocks him from disrupting Michael’s trick. The chaotic yet amusing scene reaches its apex when another security guard comes over and is mooned by Jay, causing the skaters and the security guards to get into a kerfuffle. It quickly switches over to a church where Michael, Adolf and Jay can be seen serving as altar boys.