The Endless Summer 2

This is another shaggy, low-key Bruce Brown surf docu. Endless Summer 2 has a tone very much in keeping with the chill surf culture, giving you some interesting history and wrapping it all together with some well- choreographed surfing scenes. It is endlessly enjoyable.

I remember this picture screening at a discount second-run house, and walking into the run-down downtown theatre simply to get out of the rain and kill some time before meeting some friends. Little did I know when I sat down that, by the end of this movie, I would totally flip for the sport and that this movie would be the impetus to get me surfing too.

Endless Summer 2 is just a slight, breezy little picture, a DIY travelogue with great scenery, big waves and daring surfers, Most of all, it just made surfing look like it would be a whole lot of fun - like anyone could do it. And I am here to tell you, it really is fun... and you really CAN do it.

There's plenty of other pictures that have dramatized the sport - Blue Crush, Point Break, In God's Hands, Chasing Mavericks etc - but this film is just a simple, pleasant 90 minutes that has a reverence for the sport, the power of nature and those who discover the world while in search of the next big pipeline.

Be warned: this movie will encourage any landlocked viewer to ditch work and catch a wave, too.

this film lives up the hype of being even better than the legendary original. the style is precisely that of the original, but the leap is the technical quality of the photography. much of the photography is so beautiful and astonishing that it looks like james cameron computer generated it. you watch it, thinking "how the heck did they film that?" now i am a jersey boy, born in nyc, know nothing about surfing. but i know a great film and this is one.

I found this sequel much better than the more-famous "Endless Summer" which had been made 30 years before this film. That was good, but this is far better and a big reason is better camera lenses and techniques.

The photography in here is spectacular and I'm not a fan of surfing but this is amazing footage....and who isn't awed by huge waves? The camera puts you inside and underneath some of these mammoth waves and they aren't just spectacular; they are beautiful.

As in the first film, the narration and the travelogue is interesting and humorous. Bruce Brown, the man who narrated both films, is consistently entertaining in this area as he navigates us to distant countries and islands. We see, for example, the beaches of Australia, France, Fiji, Alaska, Indonesia, Africa, on and on - just magnificent scenery.

Also featured are wild animals, poisonous reptiles, a topless beach and assorted other goodies. It also was interesting to see familiar faces from the mid- 1960s movie and see how they've aged.

It all makes the 110-minute film interesting for anyone, surfers or not.

I'm a New York City boy, have what I claim are the whitest legs in America, and I have never surfed, but I love watching Surfer movies (even the hokey ones from the mid-sixties). Endless Summer 2 is beautiful. Great video, and even the obviously staged bits work because we're all in on the staginess. The guys are likable and fun.

One Kahuna of a Complaint, however, is--I want to Hear some of those Waves crashing. You've got great video, but the music often gets in the way of the sensory pleasure. I see beautiful waves, but the gift of the Sound all of that powerful water makes is taken away from me.

Those beautiful sunsets and sunrises need Natural Sound, not Man-Made music. In Indonesia I wanted to HEAR the noise all of those cars and motor-bikes were making. SOUND puts the viewer there. You took all of the natural sound out, then added little bits around the music in the Edit.

Keep the musicians OUT of the Edit Room.

Thirty years after making the greatest surfing movie of all time - "Endless Summer", with Mike Hynson and Robert August as two surfers who try to achieve the ultimate dream (an endless Summer of waves, girls, sun, and surf)- Bruce Brown decided to shoot a sequel. He took two more surfers, a shortboarder and a longboarder, and traveled the world again. This time around, the surfing world is much larger than just Hawaii and California, so the guys don't really get to play "surfing ambassador" on this trip like the two other guys did in 1964.

Robert August makes a guest appearance. Since completing his surfing odyssey in 1964, he's now known as one of the greatest surfboard shapers in the business, specializing in longboards. One of the greatest tragedies in the world is the fact that the board he used in "Endless Summer" ended up on a used surfboard rack and was sold, lost forever to a nameless surfer who probably didn't know what he had. However, August has made a living creating duplicates of that board and they continue to sell well. But I'm deviating from the movie.

Again we have Bruce Brown giving narration to the film, although in this movie the cameras recorded sound, so we can hear the surfers reactions to the waves and rides rather than have Brown interpret them for us (though I miss his narration - it was much funnier in his retelling). And we have the familiar tune from The Sandals, but recorded with better guitars. This time the two title surfers go to places not normally associated with water sports, such as Alaska and France. But even here, with the improvement in wetsuit technology in the past 30 years, surfers are riding waves. We also get treated to a brief history of surfing at the beginning of the film, which is a nice tribute to the sport which has done well for Brown.

Interspersed between the surfers' travels are clips from surf competitions, famous moments in surf history, and some fantastic underwater photography. While the trailer to the movie focused on the big action scenes (a la the "X Games" influence of ESPN), the movie itself actually follows a less MTV-heart attack pace, showing us the grace and beauty of moving on a wall of water. The advances in camera technology have really benefitted filmmakers, and it shows in this movie.

So is the sequel as good as the original? Yes, if not better. While I miss the relaxing humor of Bruce Brown's narration that was in the original, the photography of the sequel is much better. I'd suggest watching both.