The Birdman has been kidnapped by circus freaks. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue him?
Tony Hawk in Boom Boom Sabotage is a 2006 Canadian Direct to Video computer-animated sports film featuring Tony Hawk and produced by Mainframe Studios (of ReBoot and later Barbie animated movies fame). As the name implies, it ties in with the Boom Boom HuckJam series of extreme sports spectacles Hawk and his team staged in the mid-2000s.The story revolves around a band of skater kids who rubbed elbows with the Birdman himself who was just about to stage his Boom Boom HuckJam show in the tech-dominated city of Lincolnville where video games and skateboarding are cool...
...only for Hawk and his fellow skater friends to be abducted by a circus troupe led by an eccentric, washed-up ringmaster named Larry Grimley, who kidnapped the skating legend in an effort to revive his failed circus act. The kids, along with their military vet-turned-skateboarding organizer friend Frank set out to rescue Tony and save the show.
A link to the full movie can be found here
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The film provides examples of:
- Absurdly Cool City: Lincolnville, with its more or less futuristic vision and emphasis on technology and video games.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The skater kids stumble upon a huge storm drain pipe leading to Grimley's hideout while on their way to rescue Tony.
- Action Girl: Kit, the sole female skater in the group.
- As Himself: Tony Hawk, in one of his many roles as himself.
- Badass in Distress / Distressed Dude: Tony and his Boom Boom HuckJam crew.
- Cain and Abel: Inter-cousin example - Grimley turns bitter towards his cousin John Dullard, who happens to be the mayor of Lincolnville and the one responsible for destroying the now-outdated circus in favour of skateparks and high technology.
- Cassandra Truth: The kids repeatedly convince Frank that Tony is missing, only for the old man to rebuff the kids' pleas for help until the end.
- Cool Board: Given that this is a skate video and all.
- Cool Old Guy: Frank, an old vet who helps organise the skate parks around Lincolnville.
- Crappy Carnival: Grimsley's rundown circus.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "The future is the future!"
- Fake-Hair Drama: Dullard's blond toupee.
- Forced Creativity: Hawk and his Boom Boom HuckJam cohorts are abducted to be part of an otherwise lackluster circus.
- The Freakshow: If Grimsley's troupe of Gonk eccentrics is anything to go by.
- Glam Rap:
- Switch Mitch with his "gangsta" persona and affinity for bling-bling.
- Ditto with the jewelry-clad gangsta clowns complete with a pimped-out lowrider car. They do appear to be part of Grimsley's troupe yet they don't seem to carry as much of a threat as the other henchmen, only just serving as eye candy of sorts for Mitch to enthuse.
- Gonk: While most of the main cast's appearance is basically stylised, Grimley and his circus troupe are depicted to be deliberately hideous and run-down.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Grimsley's feet in one scene, replete with fly-infested, decaying toenails.
- Merchandise-Driven: The film was clearly meant to promote Tony Hawk's Boom Boom HuckJam live extreme sports shows back then.
- Motion Capture: Adding to the film's authenticity was its extensive use of mocap in the skating sequences, with Hawk himself and his fellow skater-actors providing their performances. This wasn't the first time Mainframe used mocap for actors' performances though; they utilised it to great effect in Barbie in the Nutcracker a few years prior.
- Old Soldier: Frank used to be a military officer prior to organizing skateparks and skate events, often sharing his fond memories of being a serviceman back in the day.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Switch Mitch and his ghetto getup.
- Repulsive Ringmaster: Larry Grimley. As if his eccentric persona wasn't enough to make you sneer at him.
- Self-Deprecation: The film pokes fun at Tony's celebrity status, particularly in one scene where DJ, one of Tony's skater colleagues, chalked his disappearance up to having been busy with celebrity commitments Hawk is obligated to do such as press junkets and lame voice acting jobs. Heck, it might have been poking fun at the film itself.
- Shout-Out:
- The Titanic Hotel is quite obviously a dig at a certain ocean liner which sank on her maiden voyage in 1912.
- During that sequence when Tony's HuckJam co-stars were abducted, one of Grimsley's henchmen was on a trike, mimicking the infamous trike sequence from The Shining complete with the carpet pattern.
- The press trailer for the film makes references to other high-profile celebrity kidnappings such as the infamous Lindbergh kidnapping.
- Shown Their Work: The skate session scenes were motion captured by Hawk and other professional skateboarders, similar to what Mainframe did with the earlier Barbie in the Nutcracker feature where they hired members of the New York City Ballet to perform the complex dance sequences.
- The Prankster: Kit's younger brother Jesse, with his affinity for spitefully throwing rotten eggs and firecrackers.
- Tuckerization: Frank, who is named and modelled after Tony's late father Frank Hawk.
- Voice Changeling: The aptly-named troupe member Mimic, whose ability to copy someone else's voice makes up for his dimwittedness.
