Gleaming The Cube

The late 1980s and early 1990s had a genre of movie that is much harder to come across these days. I don't know if it has an official name but if I had to call it something, I'd call it "skatesploitation" because it's as good a moniker as any.
Even though it's about BMX racing rather than skateboarding, I'd say Rad fell into that category along with movies like Airborne and Grind and Prayer Of The Rollerboys (which is a rollerblading movie, but still) and our subject this evening, Gleaming The Cube.
I'd be a liar if I said I'd seen many skatesploitation movies. If you include the one I watched tonight, I've seen two (the other being Rad) but I'm going by the rule that you can judge an exploitation film by its trailer; regardless of what happens in the movie, the trailer plays up what the movie is exploiting to get butts in the seats.
But enough of my babbling, what is this movie about?
Gleaming The Cube is about a Christian Slater who hangs around with his skateboarding buddies and shares a room with his adopted brother Vinh, with whom he plays chess and bickers (but in a loving way). Vinh works at a video store run by his girlfriend's father, who is involved with a charity that provides medical supplies to Vietnam. He's also involved in shady goings-on. And Vinh finds out about those shady goings on and then all kinds of shit hits the fan. So Christian Slater has to get to the bottom of the mystery and [SPOILER, for those who haven't seen the trailer, which gives this away] avenge Vinh's death.
I spent a great deal of Gleaming The Cube feeling like plot points weren't connecting. Heck, more than plot points, I felt like entire sections of movie weren't connecting. There's the first part, which Vinh is really the star of until he's suddenly out of the picture. The Christian Slater does some detective work. Then he's changing his image from a skateboarding slacker to a clone of his brother for reasons I only half understood. Then he explodes some stuff. Then he's helping the cops get the bad guys. I'm sure there was a story in all of those setpieces but I couldn't quite follow it.
In all honesty, I don't know that I liked Gleaming The Cube. It was no Rad, I can tell you that much. Rad may not be a better movie (BMX professionals and Bart Connor are not great actors; however, Tony Hawk has a small role in Gleaming The Cube and is quite good) but the story is easier to follow. The story is also a lot more innocent and maybe I like that. I guess I don't want a lot of murder and arms dealing in my skatesploitation movies; I just want to watch dudes on skateboards. And there were really not a lot of dudes on skateboards, sadly. They opted to go the having-a-plot route instead.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I should point out that the only reason I watched Gleaming The Cube at all is because Christian Jacobs is in it. He is not in it a lot. I think he has two lines (the best one being "There's my mom's house! And there's my dad's house!") and not a single closeup. Which is probably okay because he was a teenager when they filmed it and if I thought he was cute I'd feel kinda creepy about it. (The curse of having a fangirl crush on a former child actor. Though I really don't think he got attractive 'til he got older.) But, yeah, it could be I'm disappointed in the movie because there wasn't nearly enough pre-Aquabats Bat Commander for my taste.
I tried to be invested in the story but it was just too choppy for me to keep caring and I found that my favorite part was probably the end credits, which showed Christian Slater's skateboarding double (at least, I assume it was a double; all his skateboarding scenes were shot in that charming '80s body double kind of way) skating around and doing tricks. That's the sort of thing I expected to see in the first place, dang it!

End of line.
-Sally