Cinema: Sporting Short

Slcaterdater. Speeding, curling, swerving, skillfully hopping curbs or suddenly stretching out flat to glide under a parked truck, seven adolescent boys on skateboards cruise the streets of a sunny California town. Their performance is fine, fast sport until—hey, what's up?

One of the freckle-faced daredevils notices that a freckle-faced girl on a bicycle is noticing him. Soon he peels away to investigate—and a fearful tremor of change goes through a world so far snugly limited to boys, boards and simple physical prowess. Girls are the tribe's natural enemy.

Having only that much to say, this free-flowing film short—unbroken by a single word of dialogue—says it with exceptional humor and freshness in precisely 18 minutes. Never overemphasizing, music combines with the insistent scrape of skate wheels in a cheery valedictory to the beardless lads (all played by nonprofessionals), presumably headed for new spills and thrills on the freeways of biological maturity. Producer Marshal Backlar, 30, and Writer-Director Noel Black, 28, thus establish themselves as novice moviemakers who seem happily unafraid of going their own way. They resolutely tackle a minor theme and polish it to professional perfection—a swift, sensitive and funny celebration of a small universal truth. Succinct as poetry, Skaterdater simply happens like a green spring morning; it is the lyric cinematic equivalent of light verse.