Finally finished writing up my masters thesis and plucked up the courage to switch on the computer again. Instead of watching the traditional Wallace and Gromit Curse of the Were-Rabbit I watched the Hotaches film WideBoyz and wrote a little review below. In short I thought it was fab and blew Odyssey out the water and my mum liked it too. I beleive it is on a par with Curse of the Were-Rabbit, which makes it a definite winner in my opinion.
I really, really enjoyed this film and would recommend it to climbers and non-climbers alike. I think the reason it appealed so much was, that unlike a lot of climbing films it follows a story. Two guys on a mission, going from training on homemade plywood cracks in a basement in Sheffield to the hardest offwidth in the world in the american desert. It’s the climbing equivalent of the Alan Sugar ‘I started out selling windscreen wipers and look at me now’ sort of inspirational ancedote. An assurance that persistence and creativity wins out over even terribly inconvenient goals.
Offwidths
are a very unusual speciality and I think they make good subjects for filming.
Many films following good climbers see them climb many impressively difficult
routes, more often than not they make it look so easy and graceful that you
begin to doubt whether it was difficult at all (until you go seek the route out
and stand underneath it). This is not a problem with offwidths – Tom and Pete
despite their considerable skill are still visibly, physically trying hard.
There are also some seldom seen moves pulled out the bag such as many
foot-in-crack-above-head moves. I must try that sometime.
This is a
great motivating film for anyone that likes training, as it features a section
devoted to Tom Randall’s inventive training basement and the number of
exercises you can create using a selection of plywood cracks. Finally, unlike a
lot of films it is about a successful climbing partnership and their eventual
success seems like a proper team effort and I think this is something every
climber can relate to.
