First Descent

Let’s grant a few facts: Snowboarding is a sport that demands top physical condition, extraordinary endurance, dauntless courage and lightning reflexes; few people can do it, and only the most dedicated and gifted can do it really well. From its beginnings in the 1970s as a despised bad-boy offspring of skiing, it has grown in importance and acceptance until becoming an event at the Winter Olympics. All of that said, if snowboarding were as dull as this movie Kemp Curly and Kevin Harrison have made about it, there wouldn’t be a board on the slopes anywhere in the world. Endless repetition leads to numb boredom, and extensive interviews with stars of the sport lend little insight; despite their obvious prowess, they aren’t the most articulate commentators (they say “awesome” and “rad” a lot).