Pretty Boy... Surfer

The time: 1993. The place: California, USA.

Our scene opens as the walking hairflip that is Mitchell Goosen (as portrayed by Shane "Mitchell Goosen" McDermott) is coming home from a long day of surfing, only to find that his parents are making plans to head to Australia for 6 months, leaving him to rot in the snowbound wasteland of Cincinnati. Gasp! Can Mitchell survive so far away from his beloved Pacific? Can he nail the antagonist's sister? Will Cousin Wiley (Seth Green) ever be cool? Can all the former enemies in the film come together as a team to beat those jerky Preps in a death-defying skating race down the infamous "Devil's Backbone?" All this and more in the "world's only rock 'n rollerblade movie!" Airborne, directed by the incomparable (ha!) Rob Bowman, is a testament to the importance of being a white guy with jean shorts and a sparkling smile in a world gone sour.

Unfortunately, this little flick has been largely ignored by the greater portion of nostalgia-hounds that would normally eat this kind of bullshit up. Shame on them. If you're going to obsess over ridiculous movies from your childhood, obsess over the best. I suppose it doesn't help that the only place to get it on DVD is from Germany (dubbed in German, no English subtitles) or from Hong Kong (pirated, naturally, but at least it's in English). I got mine from Hong Kong. But there's always VHS! And strangely enough, there was also a period of about a year (somewhere around 2004, I believe) where this was played on almost a weekly basis on various movie channels (HBO, Showtime, &c.). I'm not really sure why this was, but you might still be able to catch it while you're flipping channels. Just make sure it's not the Steve Guttenberg Airborne from 1998. That is exactly the opposite of everything Mitchell Goosen stands for. That is dog shit.

In any case, here are some important Airborne facts:

1. Jack Black is in it (Oggy!)
2. Seth Green is in it (the Wiley-Man!)
3. Shane McDermott is in it (and nothing else, ever, no matter what)
4. That one chick who played the secretary in Ferris Bueller is in it
5. Nobody else is in it
6. It manges to represent just about every extreme sport that existed at the time, thanks to roughly 60% of its running time being dedicated to extreme sport montages
7. Another 30% is Mitchell making love to the camera
8. The final 20% is the most important part: the tits-out orgy of a rollerblade race that simultaneously acts as the conflict, climax, and resolution of the film
9. Although it seems like those add up to 110%, keep in mind that Mitchell spends at least half of the final race making love to the camera

Mitchell Goosen... he's a dreambag!

Rather than go on and on (and rest assured, I could talk about Airborne for quite some time), I think I'll cut myself off here and just suggest that you go rent/buy/borrow it immediately, and enrich your life in a way you had perhaps thought impossible. Just make sure to keep your ears open for my favorite line of the film, delivered with appropriate disdain from the musclebound Jack:

"Pretty boy... surfer."

Until Airborne opens your eyes to the ways of the world, you might not understand how such a statement could be the most venomous insult you've ever heard. But you will.

Oh, and for those adventurous/alcoholic movie fans out there, I've thrown together an Airborne drinking game that you may want to try out. It's pretty simple: you take a drink every time the movie is awesome. Be careful though--this movie is pretty fucking awesome, most of the time.