This is the anti-Beach Blanket Bingo. The message is you CAN'T stay young and irresponsible and surfing-obsessed for your whole life.
Big Wednesday starts out looking like a dramatic version of the famed surfing documentary Endless Summer, with its big waves and young, carefree surfers. But life intervenes, with Vietnam and simply the passage of time turning the surfers into embittered middle-aged has-beens. They reunite to surf giant, once-every-seven year waves and try to rediscover what it was about surfing that so fired their imaginations when they were younger. It all manages to be dramatically compelling without being mawkish.
Makes a fine companion piece to any other surfing movie.
Big Wednesday starts out looking like a dramatic version of the famed surfing documentary Endless Summer, with its big waves and young, carefree surfers. But life intervenes, with Vietnam and simply the passage of time turning the surfers into embittered middle-aged has-beens. They reunite to surf giant, once-every-seven year waves and try to rediscover what it was about surfing that so fired their imaginations when they were younger. It all manages to be dramatically compelling without being mawkish.
Makes a fine companion piece to any other surfing movie.