Freestyle Movie Reviews

This celebration of the 2000 Gravity Games, a collection of extreme sporting events held over nine days in Providence, Rhode Island, features coverage of the various competitions as well as bonus material, including outtakes and music videos. The freestyle motocross competition, in which intrepid riders perform tricks while making jumps on motorcycles, contains footage of Carey Hart breaking new ground by doing a back flip on a motorcycle, a feat that sends the crowd, and his fellow riders, into ecstasy. In the "bike dirt" competition, bicyclists tackle a course made of piles of earth, while in "bike vert" the riders perform stunts while riding up and down a large wooden u-shaped ramp. In the "skateboard vert" finals, some of the best skateboarders in the world rocket up the ramps, defying gravity while performing acrobatic stunts and then somehow skating back down.

Other events on this lengthy (nearly three-hour) DVD include inline skating (in "street" and "vert" styles), downhill skateboarding, wakeboarding (in which participants are towed behind speeding boats), and the ever-popular street luge. If some of the events seem bizarre, the coverage, which was originally shot for NBC, tends to provide a lot of background information as well as profiles of the participants. Lest anyone think this is solely a playground for totally rad dudes, there are some fearless female participants, and some of their exploits are featured in a bonus music video titled "Sick Chicks." --Robert J. McNamara