It’s not often that one gets to see the beginnings of a hopefully bright career for both a director and their cast in the same film. Viewers of North Hollywood, however, will find themselves in such a situation. This coming-of-age film is the directorial feature debut of Mikey Alfred and his team of skaters-slash-actors at the company Illegal Civilization, and if this is an example of what we can come to expect from all parties involved later down the line, then the sky’s the limit.
North Hollywood focuses on Michael, a cocky and headstrong recently graduated skateboarder who fosters dreams of becoming a pro skater. Aside from that, Michael is kind of directionless in life and tends to be flaky with everyone around him, including those who care for him. This leads to Michael developing a rather nasty penchant for lying through his teeth, making excuses for just about everything. Ultimately the only way Michael ever really seems to learn anything is when something blows up in his face and he has to deal with the consequences, both short term and long term, of his actions.
Ryder McLaughlin absolutely shines as Michael, bringing everything about his persona to life in an extremely believable way. McLaughlin isn’t the only stellar performance in the cast, however. Aramis Hudson and Nico Hiraga, who play Michael’s friends Adolf and Jay respectively, are also consistent joys to watch perform, with Hudson, in particular, having some of the strongest emotional scenes in the film. There’s a level of genuine authentic camaraderie between the trio, which no doubt has to do with the fact that they, as well as several other supporting cast members, are all part of the Illegal Civilization team.
Naturally, since they are skaters in real life they do their own stunts here too. The standout performance in the film for me has to be Vince Vaughn as Michael’s abrasive, but extremely well-meaning, father. Ryder McLaughlin is able to hold his own in the scenes they share, but there is no question to me that Vaughn is the one commanding attention in these sequences, absolutely emanating the tangible sense of frustration he has in his son.
However, the most surprising performance has to belong to Angus Cloud as Walker. Walker is functionally like a Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come for Michael, presenting a walking avatar for those pro skater hopefuls that wash out. Michael is ostensibly a “friend” of his but is more than willing to call him a bum behind his back while at the same time trying to use Walker’s childhood connections with some local pro skaters to get into the career he wants. Walker to his credit keeps trying to give Michael some sage advice, or at least to the best of his abilities, but not all of it sticks with the young lad.
On a technical level, North Hollywood does show some signs that it is a first-time feature effort as some of the editing work in the non-skating parts of the film can be a little jumpy, but this is something I expect to be ironed out over the course of Mikey Alfred’s career. The skateboard sequences, however, are expertly shot and I honestly could just watch the cast skate for the entire length of the film’s brisk runtime.
Audio-wise there isn’t anything to note as particularly off. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the film does this neat little trick of playing around with sound. It will either slowly increase the audio level on some kind of sound effect, such as a tea kettle whistling, or slowly remove all background noise entirely during some of the film’s most key scenes for Michael. This is a brilliant little trick that tells me Alfred knows what he is doing.
Overall, this is a very enjoyable and solid opening salvo for what I hope are some long careers. There’s not really much in the way of negatives that immediately jump out at me aside from the hilarious irony that Miranda Cosgrove’s character, Rachel, professes to Michael that she can speak for herself, and yet literally only appears in scenes with him and doesn’t really say a whole lot that actually adds to the film. A shame to be sure, as she was one of the actors I was looking forward to seeing in this film. That aside, I definitely think this film is worth checking out when it releases on VOD on May 14th.