User Reviews

And they should have gotten more radical with the issues that face them as they have to go from a surfing summer straight out of high school to standing in line to see if they're fit to be sent off to Vietnam. Jan-Michael Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt are three buddies just trying to catch one good surf before they have to face adulthood, and the first half of the film shows the slice of life of their regular visits to their favorite surfing spot and various other adventures which includes an outrageous trip to Tijuana. But then they find themselves in line at a military recruiting center, a very long line, and it's obvious that's some of them are doing their best to avoid being sent into action.

The angelic looking Vincent play the character who parallels his realize issues on screen by dealing with alcoholism and drug abuse, at one point using a cape on a busy highway heading to the beach, passing it around as if the approaching cars were bulls, causing an accident. A wild house party has the three men dealing with a bunch of crashers in a most hysterical fight scene, where the house's owner, veteran actress Barbara Hale, just reading her book, looking up every now and then and just shaking her head. The always hysterical Fran Ryan is also very funny as the local beach greasy-spoon operator, dealing with a food fight and offering homespun advice that nobody takes. The pretty Patti D'Arbanville is the love interest, but she's overshadowed by the three young leads.

Then there's Sam Melville as the longtime caretaker of the pier which is later condemned. Those heading down to this deed have to go down a flight of Stony rickety stairs that Vincent, too drunk to walk, and barely make it down the first time he goes to surf. A Slice of Life moments are very nice and gives a light stealing to the film, but it turned serious once the Vietnam subplot pops up, although the efforts of some of these recruits to avoid service is very funny and gives the single finger salute to the military who didn't care that they were sending young men off to their deaths.

This is a very likable film, pleasant but not strong as far as a single plot is concerned. It's about the values of friendship, getting through the rough times together, and a shared interest that gives the film a beautiful look with great photography accompanied by a beautiful music score. A nice little sleeper from 1978 that is barely remembered, especially when a film set a few years before dealt with the last days of high school accompanied by a snappy soundtrack. There's plenty of 60's songs heard here, one montage going from Carole King to Frankie Valli, truly capturing the feelings of this decade. It's a bittersweet ending, but well worth searching out.

Serious, if meandering odyssey of three male surfing friends from 1962 to 1974, local legends in the beach towns of Southern California, who reunite after each has come to a personal crossroads in his life. Jan-Michael Vincent's Matt is the troubled one who drinks, Gary Busey's Leroy is the hellraiser and William Katt's Jack is the writer's conscience, the straight arrow, the only one of the trio who goes to war in Vietnam. They have ladies in their lives but no real family, and their mentor is a bearded sage nicknamed Bear who makes surfboards (he gets married and opens his own shop, but we learn that he, too, goes to ruin). Anchored by beautiful Bruce Surtees cinematography (with surfing sequences by Greg MacGillivray), this drama from director John Milius (who also co-wrote the screenplay with Dennis Aaberg) is full of personal remembrances, quiet contemplation in the midst of turmoil, sad reflection and, yes, lots of fisticuffs (what would a Milius film be without them?). Like all movies extracted from a filmmaker's past--his lazy-hazy days of youth, and all that--these people and their decisions and interactions must mean a great deal more to him than to anybody else. Milius tries making the journey a lively one--he certainly makes it a visually handsome one--but he cannot escape clichés...in fact, he appears to embrace them. Once we move past the tumultuous younger years, the boys are already being referred to as "all-timers." It's important that we see the passage of time, but this exemplifies what's wrong with Milius' approach. He's so impatient and heavy-handed, he underlines everything twice, so that we don't miss a trick. ** from ****

I saw the TV ad for this in May of '78 and it looked interesting but I was only 9 or 10, so I didn't get to see it. The film was negatively reviewed and only made so much at the box office at the time.

Happy to say since then, the film had been on VHS and was finally brought to DVD (which I now have.) The film stars Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt (later of "The Greatest American Hero) and Gary Busey (6 months before the release of "The Buddy Holly Story".)

If you ever doubted Busey's or Katt's acting abilities, watch them here, they're awesome. I'd put the film in the "wild" category, because it's a pretty "wild" look at surfing guys from 1962 to 1974 and how they grow and change as people in that time.

They're excellent surfers and as teens, that seems to be the #1 thing in their life. Seems like even more than girls then. Certainly more than school.

After that though, once into those young adult years, along comes one change after another. The days of 'surfer culture' after 1964, certainly took a hit after the British Music Invasion and even more so after the U. S. entered Vietnam. (Not to say it was just their world that changed due to the war of course.)

William Katt's character is off to fight, Busey's character does all he can to avoid the draft. Jan Michael, he doesn't get accepted for duty but staying home frustrates him too, as the changes in America begin to make him angry. He bellows at a hippie for calling him "brother."

After 1967, even the Beach Boys (music group) saw their popularity plummet, as it seemed them and surfing had become a less relevant thing at the time. So, his frustrations at getting older and his world changing are valid to him.

Later in the film , they are reunited.... and I'll stop there. For my feelings, it was a wonderful look at an era , which at the time , seemed forgotten almost. The ending, is perfection.

I give 10 stars because I like the movie, no other reason. (END)

A friend of mine from work mentioned he just dug this film out of a pile of old movies sitting around at home, so I figured what the heck, bring it in and I'll take a look. My date of birth puts me about a decade earlier than the characters in this picture, but still within that baby boomer generation that the film was meant to appeal to. The picture takes a more mature approach than those beach blanket films of the Sixties when young adults had absolutely nothing to worry about. Here the main characters were about to face growing up and out of the sun culture they were so fondly a part of from the early Sixties into the mid-Seventies. The poignancy of the film is represented by local legend Matt Johnson's (Jan-Michael Vincent) unsteady growth out of his teen years, facing a wartime draft and the dissolution of his boyhood band of rowdies. Told from the view of a narrator who's never identified (unless I missed it), the story is told in a series of vignettes that time-jump in rough increments of three years at a time until the denouement of 'Big Wednesday' - that once in a lifetime confluence of moon and tides that produce the biggest waves ever to make their appearance on The Point, an area of California coastline where the story takes place.

Seeing the movie's leads, Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt is an interesting exercise in nostalgia for anyone who's golden age coincides with the Seventies. I don't know about Vincent and Katt, but Busey surely wouldn't fit into those swim trunks anymore. That ever present snarly smile of his was on display throughout a major portion of the picture.

I guess if surfing's your thing, this will be an entertaining flick, weaving a handful of the era's great songs into the soundtrack - tunes like 'Locomotion', 'That's What I Want' and 'He's a Rebel' - all cleverly placed to counterpoint the action on screen and the attitudes of the main players. The surfing scenes at the finale are what you'll want to stick around for as the film's hero trio take that last ride into the sunset, figuratively speaking. It's what everyone in the story was waiting for, the Big Wednesday of their lives that could only be described in the jargon of the surfer - "It's a Boss Swell".

Marking 17 years on IMDb by watching the superb Tokyo Godfathers (2003-also reviewed), I started looking for a title to watch, in order to mark 18 years on the site. Taking a glance at the HMV The Premium Collection Blu-Rays, I spotted a movie which I've seen be praised over the years, which led to me surfing up.

View on the film:

Laying out a presentation which includes a sparse commentary and interested interview with the director ported over from Blue Underground's DVD release, WB present a very good soundtrack transfer, crashing the waves with a mighty oomph, while the print shines in the surfing sequences, but is disappointingly far too dark for a number of nighttime scenes.

Looking back on his life in the interview, and revealing that he got into surfing when he was just 12 years old, the screenplay by co- writer (with Dennis Aaberg) / director John Milius rides a huge wave of Milius mythologizing himself, where the characters (who Milius reveals are based on people he used to go surfing with) are kept as thumbnails, whose outlines are drawn from Milius's remaining on how he and his friends would surf in the day, then get into parties and punch-ups every night, with not even the darkness from the Vietnam war, being able to block out the allure of surfing from Milius.

Attempting to glide his avatars into a hangout atmosphere, director Milius & Dirty Harry (1971-also reviewed) cinematographer Bruce Surtees unwind with stylish long-take crane shots over the friends searching for the big wave, which parts in low-lit dissolves to the Vietnam war blowing up the friendships, and innocence of their lives.

Looking back at production, WB executive Anthea Sylbert said that the film was "a classic example of an egomaniacal insane man going over budget and not listening to anyone. I mean, they were all just waiting for the Big Wave. Give me a break!" Milius makes clear how much he desired the Big Wave, with (sadly) short bursts of excellent surfing set-pieces, via wonderfully riding the camera right next to the surfboards, and rolling the camera along the waves, as the sun fades on Wednesday.