The Skateboard Kid(1993)

One day, as Maggie (Bess Armstrong) is in her home/antiques shop being bothered about her mortgage by the banker Mr. Banks (David Wells), Dan (Cliff DeYoung) enters and winds up proposing marriage to her, telling her that he will co-sign the loan for her mortgage as well as pay for her daughter Jenny’s (Shanelle Workman) heart operation if she accepts. Maggie says “yes”, and Dan signs the loan and declares that they will tie the knot tomorrow. Maggie gives Jenny the news, which angers her since she hates Dan, and that night, she tells Zack (Trevor Lissauer) all about it when he stops by her hangout in the water tower next to her house. Soon after, Zack hears laughter going on in Dan’s office nearby, and through sneaking a walkie-talkie down through a vent in the roof, Zack overhears Dan telling his cousin Earl (Rick Dean) that he only co-signed the loan so he could search her property for a hidden payload of gold that his great-grandfather, an Old West outlaw, stole from Maggie’s great-grandmother. He also says he has a map left by his ancestor in a nearby safe that is supposed to reveal the gold’s location, but it contains an odd sequence of numbers and letters that he doesn’t understand.

Later on, Zack quietly breaks into the office with Rip (voiced by Dom DeLuise) and steals the map, but he accidentally wakes up Earl, who was sleeping nearby. He and Rip manage to escape him, and though Zack tries to get the map to Jenny so she can show it to Maggie and expose Dan, his attempt fails after Earl informs Dan about what Zack did and Dan sends him and his son Ham (Jonathan Pekar) and his gang to Maggie’s house to intercept him, forcing him to flee into the night. The next morning, Frank (Timothy Busfield) comes to Maggie’s house asking if she has seen Zack because he never came home last night, and she says that she hasn’t, then tells him about her impending nuptials and extends an invitation to him.

As the wedding begins at the church, Zack and Rip are shown outside. Knowing that he will be stopped by Dan or Ham or one of their lackeys and have the map taken from him before he can get it to Jenny, Zack decides to put a scarecrow on top of Rip and put the map in its hand and have Rip take it into the church so Jenny can get it that way. This plan succeeds, and Jenny shows Maggie the map and tells her of Dan’s true intentions. Maggie dumps Dan on the spot, and when Dan tries to get the map, Zack comes in and pushes the wedding cake into him, then takes what is believed to be the map and makes a getaway on Rip. He sees Frank arriving in Sheriff Higgins’ (Lee McLaughlin) car and tells him to meet him at Maggie’s shop, after which he and Rip find themselves chased by Ham and his gang with Higgins in pursuit. Maggie and Jenny then come out with Dan following behind, and despite Dan threatening to foreclose the mortgage if she doesn’t change her mind, Maggie tells him that she won’t marry him now or ever. After he leaves, Maggie and Jenny fill Frank in on what has gone down, and Jenny shows them the map she still has in her possession and says that they have a treasure to find. Maggie and Frank take the map and head to the shop while Jenny stays to keep an eye on Dan.

Zack and Rip manage to outrun Higgins and all of the bad guys (and inexplicably fly for a portion of the chase) except for Ham, who tears out Rip’s control stick and sends both Rip and Zack down a hill. He finds Zack hanging onto a railing, and after making him hand over the paper, he stomps on Zack’s hands to make him lose his grip and fall all the way down the hill. Zack finds the skateboard still intact but Rip’s parts are busted up, and after they acknowledge each other as best friends, Rip shuts down. Ham gets the paper to his father, but they discover that it is just the marriage certificate. As Frank and Maggie are looking for the gold in Maggie’s shop, Jenny pops in and warns them that Dan is now with Mr. Banks and they are looking for Higgins, no doubt so they can have him force Maggie and Jenny to move out.

As Zack mopes over feeling that he has blown it, he looks down at the reflective peace symbol sticker under Rip and sees his “Wow” hat upside down and backwards, which spells out “Mom”, and he remembers his late mother’s words on how, sometimes, the thing you’re looking for is staring you right in the face. He deduces that the odd sequence of numbers and letters on the map must spell out something upside down and backwards, so he decides to get back to Maggie’s shop immediately. He climbs up the hill and gets back on the skateboard, but ties his shirt to a stick like a sail and uses the wind currents to take him back into town. Ham returns for him and gets up alongside him, but Ham’s friend Snake (Kai Lennox) – having grown to dislike Ham – uses a wire to clothesline him off of his ATV and allow Zack to keep going. The runaway ATV then brushes up against the skateboard’s motor, sending sparks into it that bring Rip back to life, and he then flies Zack right to Maggie’s shop. He sees Maggie moving out of her home with Dan and Mr. Banks watching, and after noticing that Dan has the map, he rides up and snatches it from him, then reads the sequence in the reflective sticker and sees that they spell out “water tower”, meaning that the gold is hidden in the water tower. Rip wraps one of his motor’s cords around one of Dan’s cars and drags it up a nearby hill, planning to send it into the tower and topple it. However, during their ascent, Earl appears with a shotgun in hand to halt Zack, but as he tries to get the gun to work, it suddenly goes off, and the buckshot hits Rip and destroys him for good. The car rolls right into the statue of Dan’s grandfather, which then falls and breaks one of the water tower’s legs, bringing it down and making the gold spill out.

Dan greedily tries to assert his ownership of the land and shows an arriving Higgins the deed, but Frank takes a look at it and points out that Dan only has the rights to the land and the dwellings, and the water tower does not constitute a dwelling. Higgins concurs with him, telling Dan that it is a utility structure, so both it and whatever is in it belongs to Maggie. Maggie thanks Zack and kisses Frank, and Zack takes one last moment alone with Rip’s remains before leaving with his father. Some time later, Frank and Maggie get married.