The DCOM Pantheon #3: Brink! (dir. Greg Beeman, August 29, 1998)

People remember Brink! If you bring up DCOMs, people will say "Oh, like Brink! and Zenon." And we can attribute its memorability to its early release date, which meant it got rerun all the time, but nobody remembers last column's entry, You Lucky Dog. Brink! doesn't have a crazy sci-fi hook, it isn't connected to any holidays that would have made it an annual tradition and it isn't connected to any larger Disney Channel series. People remember Brink! because it's phat.

Brink! wasn't a totally unknown quantity. Erik von Detten was a minor Disney god, having starred as Sid in Toy Story and one of the leads in the Escape From Witch Mountain remake. He was also a supporting character on the great cartoon Recess and, one year after Brink! hit, co-starred in So Weird (with fellow Brink!er Patrick Levis). In addition to his Disney credits, von Detten has a bunch of guest appearances on his resume, including one appearance on The Wild Thornberries as "Adolescent Jaguar," which is the name of my new hardcore band. He retired from acting in 2010 with his cameo in Toy Story 3, and now works for a firm that sells gold, but for a while, he seemed like a surer bet than somebody like Shia LaBeouf would a few years later. If only we lived in a world where that was the case.
Brink! is about the spiritual assassination of Andy "Brink" Brinker (von Detten) by the coward Val Horrigan (Sam Horrigan). Brink and his friends rollerblade, but they do it because they love it and not because they hope to turn their hobby into a career. They call themselves "soul skaters." Val works for Team X-Bladz (pronounced "ex-blades"), a sponsored skate team. His friends are harmless tools, but Val finds power in the chaos of skating tournaments like Tom Berenger's Platoon character found himself in Vietnam.

The two sides intend to compete in a local competition, but Brink secretly joins Team X-Bladz when his father gets laid off. The last thing Brink wants to do is partner up with Val, but his family needs money now that his dad isn't drawing a paycheck. His dad who, incidentally, hates Brink. Dad complains that Brink is abnormally happy, he complains that Brink is abnormally sad, he disapproves of skating even though Brink offers to skate to help pay the mortgage.

A less intense performance would give Dad an "I just don't understand my free-spirited son" conservative vibe, but actor David Graf commits and comes off like he sincerely wishes his son would get hit by a train. He'd cry tears of joy if Brink announced he was quitting rollerblading to take up Russian roulette. By the end of the movie, he's yelling "That's my boy!" as Brink aces a tournament performance, but for most of the film, he thinks his son is his mortal enemy.

Before that tournament, though, Brink's friends find out he's sold out and, even after hearing sponsorship deals are the only thing keeping his family solvent, turn their back on him. They find out because Brink shows up to a competition wearing sunglasses, which he thinks will completely mask his identity. The reverse-Clark Kent does not work.

Brink feels guilty for working with the enemy and wants his friends back, but only fully defects from Team X-Bladz after Val throws gravel in soul skater Gabriella's path during a race, messing up her leg. Brink returns to his buddies, who beat Team X-Bladz in the tournament, Dad gets his job back, and the movie ends with a song called "Come On Brink" co-written by the drummer from Def Leppard.

Brink! was directed by Greg Beeman, who had made Under Wraps and would direct one Disney Channel Original Movie per year between 1998 and 2002. As the person who made the first supernatural DCOM one year and then made the first teen sports DCOM the next, Beeman helped reify pre-teen feelings into a successful made for TV movie format. I don't know whether to credit this to him or to cinematographer Rodney Charters, who would go on to do the same job on 184 out of 24's 192 episodes, but Brink! moves pretty well. you can always tell what's happening and the film's two races get across a pretty good sense of speed.

The score came from J. Peter Robinson, who played piano and organ on the original Jesus Christ Superstar album and showed up on a bunch of progressive-but-not-quite-prog songs in the 70s and 80s. He worked with Bryan Ferry and Phil Collins, he showed up on David Bowie's Low and then transitioned into film and TV scoring. It's a lot of fun thinking about that resume as you watch kids unironically yell things like "Oh man, you just got borked" as ska music plays in the background. You picture Robinson playing on Low, thinking "This is fine but what I really want to do is create Reel Big Fish."

If the Disney Channel was making a movie about rollerblading and ska, those two things were long dead. As a person who doesn't especially care about the purity of rollerblading or ska, this doesn't bother me. If anything, it enhances Brink!, making it a film about the idea of youth culture. Extreme sports and the musical home of pork-pie hats and skanking are already cartoons, and I love watching a cartoon version of a cartoon. Everything I've described is, no joke, Disney's second adaptation of the 1865 Mary Mapes Dodge novel Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates.

Before they were big: Katie Volding, Brink's little sister, was one of the main characters of Smart House, a god-tier DCOM. She'd later appear in the three Au Pair movies, which were part of Fox Family's attempt to create their own DCOM machine. That series was actually a massive hit any network would kill for today, but Fox Family/ABC Family/Freeform didn't end up pursuing the made-for-TV format as aggressively as Disney had.

Well after they were big: Walter Emanuel Jones, who plays Boomer, was the original Black Ranger on Power Rangers. Brink's hateful dad is played by David Graf, one of the few actors to star in every Police Academy. I hadn't (and still haven't) seen any Police Academy movies, but I'm sure some kids were thrilled to see ol' Sgt. Eugene Tackleberry again. And then, of course, Erik von Detten was an ascending child star. Brink! and So Weird, which would premiere the next year, were definitely his peak, and if you watched the Disney Channel, you already knew his name.

What I had remembered from childhood: More than anything, I remember hating Val. The part must have been written for Sam Horrigan, who shares a last name with his character. He's exceptional at playing a bully shit head. Horrigan's IMDb page is full of characters with names like "Spike" and "Xander," so I think that was kind of his thing.

Val is a great bad guy in part because Sam Horrigan is constantly posing. His big eyes and mouth are used like weapons, constantly stretched in anger, entitlement and mock-sincerity. Look at this man:

(My partner pointed out that he strongly resembles Michelle Monaghan)

He's always on. Brink and the team manager will be talking in the foreground and you'll notice Val off to the side, out of focus, vamping:

As a perfect villain, he never straightens out into any posture besides "Do you know who I am?" The soul skaters trick Val into biting into a dozen worms and even then you think they're justified. He is two shoes kicked up on somebody else's desk, personified. He owns the movie.

The year is 1998: The movie opens with a generic original song from ska band The Suicide Machines. A Fastball song shows up later. Each one plays twice, because when you splurge for Fastball, you get your money's worth. You don't commission a Basquiat painting and then lock it away and never look at it.
Wouldn't fly today!: Not much here. Members of Team X-Bladz get a couple sexist and racist cracks off against Brink's friend Gabriella, but she always bests them and it's clear the movie thinks it is legally acceptable for a girl to enjoy extreme sports. It's hardly progressive, but it isn't actively offensive, either.

The _____ was in your heart the whole time: real $200/week to keep your family from being evicted

Ultimate Ranking:

Brink!
Under Wraps
You Lucky Dog

Ultimate Ranking Notes: It's Val. Brink! would be the best DCOM so far without Val, but the character and the performance are what ensure it'll stay at the top for at least a month or two.