Cliched, but fun surf romance
Saw this a few years ago and wasn't that impressed but on watching it again recently I find it's grown on me a lot. There's a lot of cliches in here, Cornwall is depicted as a crazy little world quite unlike anywhere else in Britain, where one train a week passes through town and everyone listens to hokey little local radio stations manned by oo-arr-ing rustic caricatures. There's some improbable stuff too, like a couple of people setting up a rural rave in about a day and getting a good few hundred attendees. Some of the characters are a little shallow (J.C.'s local surfing mates are little more than a chorus, pointing out what's going on now and then). The main group though, Pertwee's J.C., his girl CZJ and his old mates all have nice little problems that mess them around through the film and wind up getting resolved in quite sweet ways. Some moments of hilarity (fat, e'd-up Terry as the Silver Surfer is just cool, the rave bit in general is a fun scene), some (rather obvious) drama as J.C. and Chloe fall in and out of a relationship, building to a pacey, only slightly silly climax and a cute payoff with all the roles nicely shifted around. Doesn't really look that deeply at the issues it raises (the nature of being "grown up", responsibility, money vs soul, self respect and trustworthiness vs being cool and impressing your mates) but it's not really supposed to, it's just a bit of fluff without the serious surf ethos (or quality surf footage) of a Big Wednesday. It's very rooted in its time and place - the clothes, the hair, the vehicles are all right on the money, I almost feel like I really saw half these people in early nineties Cornwall, a nice feeling of familiarity which almost cancels out the patronising rural Cornish stereotypes scattered about. A bit of nostalgia for me for some happy times, and for others probably well worth watching if you don't take it too seriously, more an "aaaah" and a giggle than a "wow" though.score 7/10
thehumanduvet 25 July 2000
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0356833/35853
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