It's great to be a live

While few of us have the balls to ride these monster waves, it's great to listen to these purists talk about what drives them. The film gives great insight into what makes us all tick.

A Spiritual Film

Is God a surfer? Is there even a God? How the hell should I know. I haven't got a clue. But that's what you feel watching this thing. I haven't been this moved by a documentary film in a very long time...probably not since The Thin Blue Line, which is obviously a completely different film but at the same quality. Great stuff.

A Haole Weighs In

First off, I loved Stacy Peralta's DOGTOWN AND THE Z BOYS so much, I'm pretty much willing to watch anything he makes. And RIDING GIANTS was certainly worth my time. Admittedly, I'm a southern California native who drove a VW surfer van for 20 years, so this type of material has a nostalgic appeal to me that may blind me to its faults.

So to avoid just praising this film for its mind-blowing footage and lively interviews, let me mention as an aside that RIDING GIANTS does not delve very deeply into the "man-child" aspects of the surfing lifestyle. It's all about catching some waves and hanging out on the sand, and as a southern Californian native, I can dig that as much as the next "haole" (Hawaiian for "cheesefoot"). BUT the fact is that this is a less than attractive characteristic to find in adults. Riding the big waves can result in personality casualties, as well as "real" ones, as we learn in film's feature on the Mavericks coastline near Santa Cruz.

SIDELIGHT: There is a certain sameness to surfing footage after a while; my wife (who has suffered through her share of surfer movies), did turn to me a couple of times to ask, "Are you SURE we haven't seen this before?" Oh yeah, and this film has such high production quality, its brief, painfully amateurish animated portions stick out like a sore thumb.