The makers of "ESPN's Ultimate X: The Movie" could learn a lot from the much superior board-sport documentary "Dogtown and Z-Boys."

Which is not to say that "Ultimate X," the large-format, mini-feature on the popular extreme sports competition, is a bad movie — in fact, it's a fun, thrilling appetizer that gives you a brief taste of what the experience is like.

But "Dogtown," which is feature length, completely blows it away in the storytelling department.

And in doing so, "Dogtown" may stake its claim as the definitive documentary on the subject of skateboarding, effectively summing up the history of the recreational sport and also making a good case that it may get a bad rap from its detractors.

Of course, that stance is hardly surprising, considering the film was directed by director Stacy Peralta, a former skateboarding "star" turned filmmaker.

The first part of the film's title — "Dogtown" — refers to a specific region of west Los Angeles, where the modern style of skateboarding originated and flourished. An integral location is the Zephyr surf shop, where a new, more aggressive breed of surfers caught waves around the ruins of Pacific Ocean Park in the early '70s. But their attention quickly turned to the smaller, more maneuverable, wheeled boards.

The youngsters soon began using abandoned playgrounds and empty residential swimming pools — this was at the height of Southern California's mid-'70s drought — as the first skate "parks" of sorts.

And in the first year of organized skateboarding competition, these "Z-Boys" dominated with their aggressive moves and surf-like stances, while setting standard for generations of skateboarders that followed.

Though the movie is constantly engrossing, the best part may be its final third, in which Peralta presents two contrasting Z-Boys stories — Tony Alva, who became a skateboarding mogul, and the possibly more talented Jay Adams, who wasn't nearly as fortunate.

The film is also bolstered by archival footage of early Z-Boys action, and it gains certain "street cred" by featuring narration by Sean Penn (who made his first big splash playing stoner surfer Jeff Spiccoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High").

It helps that the subjects are all charismatic and interesting — any of them could have been the focus of their own documentary (particularly Peggy Oki, the first female skateboarding star).

"Dogtown and Z-Boys" is rated PG-13 for scattered use of strong profanity (including one usage of the so-called "R-rated" curse word) and mildly vulgar slang terms, brief violence (sports-related), brief drug content (photos of marijuana smoking) and brief nudity (flashes of nude photos). Running time: 90 minutes.

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