235 - The Skateboard Kid

Your Stupid Minds

In honor of the late great Roger Corman, Your Stupid Minds covers this incoherent Corman-produced family film The Skateboard Kid, starring Timothy Busfield, Bess Armstrong, and Dom DeLuise. And yes, the skateboard can talk.

Widower Frank (Busfield) and his skateboard kid Zack (Trevor Lissauer) move to Southern California where they are both turbo-bullied by a group of skateboard punks in the middle of the highway. After Zack’s skateboard gets smashed, he gets a new old one from an antique shop run by widow Maggie (Armstrong). Zack puts a lawnmower engine on it for some reason and then it’s struck by lightning and gains sentience and a horrifying claymation face. The skateboard, Rip (DeLuise) wisecracks and has magical powers, but is somehow the third most important thing going on in this movie.

The rest has something to do with an adult love triangle between Frank, Maggie and local car dealer Big Dan (Cliff De Young) who is trying to trick Maggie into marrying him because he’s a scumbag, he wants to own her crappy antique shop, AND there’s apparently buried treasure somewhere on the property he wants to steal. More hijinks ensue. One of the kids has the tiniest four wheeler in the world. Also there's a dog on the poster who's nowhere to be seen.