DCOM #3: 'Brink!' (1998)
That's what Soul Skating is all about!
Brink! is the third Disney Channel Original Movie to ever air, and the first one that I remember watching as a child. The movie follows a high schooler, Andy “Brink” Brinker (played by 90s teen dreamboat Erik von Detten, otherwise known as the mean popular guy from Princess Diaries and probably the reason why I can be attracted to boneheads as an adult), and his three best skate pals: Peter, Jordy, and Gabriella (a girl…eek!). They live in SoCal and eat, drink, and breathe inline roller skating, calling what they do “Soul Skating” because they do it just for the love of the skate and not for any monetary gain. Brink’s parents are frustrated with his airheaded attitude and lack of ambition for anything other than extreme sports, but are overall supportive of him and his interests.
The opening scene is an action sequence of these four besties skating their way to “The Pit” by the beach with ska music guiding us through this experience. This is 1998, after all, and if a bunch of roller skating teenagers aren’t running late to the melodious tunes of some ska trumpet, society would have collapsed right then and there. Life was so free back when we didn’t know that 9/11 was going to happen.
While they do their morning practice at The Pit, they are interrupted by a sponsored team called the X-Bladz, and their leader, Val Horrigan, who is a huge bully and also one of their classmates. What I love about Val is that one, we never know why the Soul Skaters and Val hate each other, besides the fact that Val just seems like a huge asshole. We don’t get any typical backstory where Val and Brink were once best friends until one day Val betrayed Brink’s trust—they seem to just not like each other. Val doesn’t get the typical teen movie bully treatment with a tragic backstory from home either. For all we know, his parents are together and treat him well and are okay with money. Instead of being this sympathetic character, Val is just straight-up transphobic, sexist, and racist. It kind of fucking rules.
The X-Bladz—a bunch of sellouts, don’t you ever forget—kick the Soul Skaters off their practice area because this photographer needs to shoot for a skate magazine. This pisses off Brink, and he starts some roller skater/skateboarder warfare telling a bunch of boarders that Val was talking shit about those who are one with the board and they start fighting. School is tomorrow, and this means war.
The Soul Skaters and Val go toe-to-toe pranking each other until Val gets a mouthful of a worm sandwich and challenges Brink to a race, right then and there. Skating is not allowed on school grounds, but when you have beef with someone and the impulse control of a squirrel, you’re just going to have to break a few rules to protect your honor. Also while they’re about to throw down, their faces are so close to each other that it looks like they might kiss. The race is going in favor of the Soul Skaters, but one of the Bladers, Boomer, gets seriously injured and Brink stops racing in order to help him out. (Obviously, Brink stopping mid-race to help a fallen racer in need is going to come up again and again.) They get caught by a teacher and are suspended for the rest of the day.
Brink’s dad is confused by his son. He doesn’t understand why his son is so happy all the time (is it drugs? No, it’s skate), doesn’t understand this strange lingo he uses (like “fam”), and is frustrated that this kid can’t stop himself from getting in trouble. The car breaks down, and later that night Brink overhears his parents talking about how money is getting really tight. I forgot to mention that Mr. Brinker has been on workman’s comp for the last six months due to a work-related back injury at a construction site. He doesn’t know if he’ll be given his job back because America is amazing and offers no protections for people whose bodies get destroyed by the very jobs they give their lives to. Brink realizes in that moment that he’s being a little shit and gets sad that his parents are struggling.
The next day, Val lets his enemies know that the X-Bladz are looking for a replacement for Boomer for the invitational coming up—not like any of them are allowed to try out…except he actually wants Brink to come because he is good at skating (and he is in love?). The Bladz pay, a whopping $200 a week, plus extra when they win. That’s a lot of money, everyone in this movie keeps saying. And Brink needs the money for his family.
In today’s money, $200 is a lot of money, but it doesn’t really go far anymore. To gauge the true weight of Brink’s decision to sell out to the bad guys for this salary, I had to consult an inflation calculator. $200 in 1998 money is the equivalent of $393 today—almost double the value, and not an amount to sniff at, especially for a high schooler. But then I had to dig deeper. In the State of California the year of the making of Brink!, children aged 16 and 17 years old were allowed to work up to 48 hours a week but no more than 60 (unclear if this is just for the farms, or film child labor too). The minimum wage in 1998 was $5.75 an hour. Let’s say that a minimum wage employer had mercy on a teenager and only scheduled them for a standard 40-hour workweek. Their pay before Social Security and taxes would $230 a week (an equivalent of $452.66 in today’s money). That’s pretty darn close to the $200 Brink would receive as an X-Blader (not counting the value of new gear, etc.). So here we have the question: is a weekly minimum wage salary worth selling out and losing your friends in the process, even if it’s for skating and family?
(For reference, in modern money and minimum wage laws, the equivalent to a 40-hour week is $660, which means that a modern-day Brink would be severely underselling himself.)
With a conversation that went like this:
CORPORATE SPONSOR ADULT: Your parents are okay with you being a semi-professional athlete?
BRINK (obviously lying): Yeah sure!
CORPORATE SPONSOR ADULT: Perfect, you’re hired!
Brink is now formally a member of the X-Bladz, child labor laws and ethics be damned. His parents, without knowing that they consented to this, are against him skating for money. He should work to support the family, though, just in a more traditional, honest job. God forbid a guy makes money doing what he loves. Without consulting his son about this, Mr. Brinker gets him a job after school at the dog groomer’s.
Brink knows he can’t say, “Hey dad I cannot take on this job for wages because I am too busy going against your wishes (and also fraudulently giving your consent) and skating professionally, and I also have to coach my friends who skate for free, and I know you are struggling with your back injury not bringing in any income into this family in which you provide for me,” so instead he says cool and goes to work washing dogs in tiny tubs. We then see him struggle to manage all of his time commitments: school, work, X-Bladz, Soul Skaters, homework, daily bodily functions. A boy just cannot do it all! Obviously, leading up to the low point of the movie, he prioritizes his friends—whom he loves the most—the least.
During his time management montage, we see Brink’s day in time stamps, and honestly I’d love whatever he’s having. Like, sure, his days are fucking packed in but that’s just what my day looks like when I’m doing both work and stand-up comedy and even when I don’t see my house for 16 hours at a time, I don’t get even remotely as much stuff done as Brink is able to. I mean, sure, this scheme sends him into literal exhaustion hallucinations, but I want what he’s having. At least the ability to get from one place to another for free so fast. Is this a sign that I’m doing to much? Please, I’m not doing nearly enough with my life!
This ruse doesn’t last long. He’s been trying to hint to his friends that he’s fucking up majorly while also having the most pathetic-looking sad face for like a third of the movie (in cooking class he says, “Baking a cake is like friendship: you put a lot of work into in and sometimes it doesn’t turn out right but it still tastes good.” What are you saying, Andrew?) Brink fakes sick on the day of the invitational so that the Soul Skaters have to drop out and he can make money with the evil X-Bladz. He tells the team to go practice instead of watching the competition but they rightfully say “fuck that” just in time to see their best friend and leader BETRAY them for 200 untaxed dollars. Not even a pair of the tiniest, silliest looking sunglasses can hide his traitorous ass. They say, “Hey Brink, fuck you,” and now Brink has nobody but his Bladz and his new best friend, Val, who is evil.
At the championship, there is a downhill street course and the X-Bladz are there to practice. The Soul Skaters show up to get some practice before the Big Day too, but Val says hell no…unless they beat them in a race. Typical Val, always challenging these people he considers losers to races. Brink goes up against Gabriella (a girl!) and Val is extra sexist and racist to her (he was before his time telling a girl from Peru to “go back to Mexico.” Val would have loved the 2016 election). Val says he’ll be the judge at the end of the course, and gives Brink a tip to go on the outside when the road turns, something you would never do as a skater. None of that makes sense until the turn comes and there’s a whole bunch of gravel on the ground near the inside. Brink warns Gabriella but she’s not about to listen to a traitor, and she wipes out. It looks horrible. She obviously can’t skate for a while. This friendship is over, over.
Here is the low point: Brink has no friends, and skating isn’t even fun anymore now that it’s all job and no fun. He’s probably hating himself for being seduced by Val’s proposition at $200 a week and a photoshoot. Finally, Brink’s depression has left his dad also at the brink, and he has a heart to heart with his son, says something like, “Skating is what you do, not who you are,” which is good advice to anyone working a job they do not love but still need money (unless you work somewhere truly evil, like Raytheon). Brink is a good person in his heart, and he can get his friends back with a little bit of work.
After his father’s pep-up talk, Brink walks up to Val and his crew drinking milkshakes on the boardwalk. To remind the audience that Val fucking sucks, we see him refuse a strawberry milkshake because strawberry is gay (or something). Brink is like, “Hey Val I quit.” And then Val is like, “No you’re not.” And then Brink takes a milkshake and throws it in his face before making the point that the worst thing about Val is that he’s sexist, racist, or a cheater—it’s that he’s no fun to skate with.
News spreads fast on this boardwalk, back when teenagers didn’t have cell phones, and his friends accept Brink back with open arms. Now they’re a four-person team again, right in time for the championship tomorrow (Gabriella will be totally healed to skate tomorrow, even though that day she is still in a splint). Soul Skaters!
To form community, Brink takes out a four-month advance to pay for the shirts and gear one would need to be a proper team sponsored by a dog washer. This championship is HUGE one, because this will be the moment that Brink takes Val down once and for all but two, this is the first time that his family (especially his dad) will get to see him skate. Brink starts off shaky because he can’t see his dad in the stands—Mr. Brinker is caught up talking to his old boss (on a SATURDAY? criminal!). But he comes back just in time to tell his wife that he’s employed again and then Brink does really good on the vertical ramp. (Side note: most of the music in this movie has been some sort of ska/90s rock kind of thing but the music for the vert montage is giving thriller. Strange.) The Soul Skaters and the X-Bladz are, of course, the top two teams, so they’re about to go head-to-head on the street hill.
One-on-one, Brink vs. Val. They’re defending their honor, sure, but this is also when we’ll see if corporate greed or the fun of the game will win out. In a different movie, this is when we wonder if these two rivals are secretly in love with each other, or one would help the other cross the finish line—but this is not that kind of movie. Val has proven himself so irredeemable at this point that when he fell over a makeshift wall and injured himself (a ruse to trick Brink, who will always help a man who is down), nobody would feel bad. After so much cheating (how was this allowed and considered a fair fight?), Brink perseveres and wins the race. His friends cheer. The corporate sponsor of the X-Bladz asks him if he wants to be the captain now and Brink turns him down. Why skate for money when you can skate for fun?
The end.
I saw this movie for the first time maybe a couple years after it came out, unsure if it was pre- or post-9/11, but still when the idea of “selling out” was, for the most part, looked down upon—especially in kids’ media. In the 90s, at least in movies and television, having a passion and then giving it and/or yourself up to a corporate ghoul for some cash, or even fame, was seen as one of the worst things you could do. That money and fame takes the soul out of things. The people in suits were always the bad guys in these types of things, and that’s just kind of how I (and probably most other millennials and older gen-Z) developed our worldview. But oh, how times have changed.
It’s interesting watching Brink! with a modern lens because it feels like our entire culture has shifted into the complete opposite. In 2025, “selling out” is one of the best things you could do (not in a moral sense, but just in, like, a strategy sense), except now you’re not selling yourself to a guy in a suit and orange sunglasses but instead, a faceless algorithm. Children these days (sorry to sound “Old Man Yells at Cloud” on you) don’t aspire to have jobs like teacher, fireman, or even professional athlete. They all want to be YouTubers and influencers—jobs that don’t really provide much to society as a whole, but make a lot of money for the people who are able to game the system.
If Brink! was told in a contemporary point of view, getting a corporate sponsorship would have been the payoff of the movie and Andy’s friends would have been painted the villains for being jealous of his success and getting in the way of him getting his bag. Brink’s dad would have also needed to have back surgery that cost a million dollars because AI took his job away and he got hit by a malfunctioning self-driving car or something. Of course we’re obsessed with money: everything costs more and it’s harder to come by and is worth less than it used to. Not to romanticize the year 1998, but holy shit we don’t just skate to have fun anymore.
Also, in very 90’s fashion, the token girl of the group is both “just one of the boys” and constantly having to prove herself as “not like other girls.” I don’t particularly dislike this trend of Girl Power characters (I mean, I was raised on them and find that they probably did influence me positively), but it’s always the same thing: girl is good at sports and because of that she HATES dresses. Let me tell you, in a corporate world skirts are the closest thing to shorts so you gotta love ‘em a little bit. She’s always able to stand up for herself on her own and is as good of a skater as her dude friends. Also, thankfully, there’s no weird sexual tension between any of them (which would absolutely fuck up a skating team dynamic!), which is something we were also lucky to see in Under Wraps previously.
As for the comic relief, there’s some good classics in there. Brink’s friend, Jordy, has a stepdad he hates and he’s always bringing this guy up! It’s annoying, but accurate and we obviously can’t have a Disney Channel Original Movie without at least a little separated parents representation. In the family with parents still married to each other, once again a little sister carries the comic relief of a film. We see the same girl play the same little sister for at least another movie coming up soon, but god I love her. Some of my favorite lines: when Brink is doing poorly in the first part of the championship she tells him, “Just skate better,” and it really put things into perspective; also, at the start of the movie she’s complaining about going to school and wants to be homeschooled like the neighbor. When the mom says she’s homeschooled because she’s Mormon, little sister goes, “Why can’t we be Mormon?” Oh girl, if only you knew.
One last thing to mention before I go: something kind of cool that I found out when reading the Wikipedia page on this movie (as I do for every DCOM), Brink! Is actually a modern retelling of the 19th-century children’s novel Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (thus, why his name is Brinker). It’s a story about a 15 year-old named Hans Brinker and his sister Gretel, who want to participate in an ice skating race. Their dad has also suffered a horrible head injury and the operation to help him is really expensive. Hans earns enough money to buy his sister’s skates, and enough for a pair for himself, too. Except he takes the money for his skates and offers it to the doctor, who is so charmed by this boy that he performs the operations for free. Now Hans has a healthy dad and a pair of good steel skates. He still loses the boys’ race when he dropped out to help a friend who was down. Gretel wins her race and wins the prized Silver Skates. The family is back to normal and everyone is happy—giving up something to help someone else may just make all your medical debt go away. Remember that, kids.
This is also, fun fact (unless this is COMMON KNOWLEDGE that only I don’t know), the story that popularized the image of the little Dutch boy who plugs a dike with his finger. All of that turned into a movie about a head-empty who loves to shred and confuses his father with greetings like “whaddup.”