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The Endless Summer
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - A very disappointed lover of documentaries
I feel obligated to warn you-as I wish I was warned-this is a documentary/travel log that does not age well. From its hype, I was expecting a story of two young men on a literal and figurative journey for one year around the world, a la "the motorcycle diary." What you get instead is a series of grainy shots of these guys surfing different locations with a really bad "ugly American" voice over telling you where they are and how silly the natives are. There is absolutely nothing of substance here. It is nothing more than bad, trite, and boring early 1960s film footage. In short, don't waste your money or time.
Rating:  - Great surfing classic and interesting world view of 1966
Way back in 1966, documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown followed two young surfers around the world in their quest for the perfect wave. It seems as if it were just the three of them - the two surfers and Bruce Brown who filmed that magical year with a hand-held Technicolor camera with no sound. Later, he edited the film and narrated it and his is the only voice we hear in addition to some original music by "The Sandals". There are no sounds of the surf, no remarks from the two surfers and we never hear the voices of all the colorful characters they meet along the way.
The concept was to surf on beaches that had never been surfed before. This led them Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Tahiti. And, naturally California and Hawaii. Sometimes the surf was to their liking. Sometimes it was not. But always it was an adventure, the kind of adventure that I quickly got caught up in even though it all seemed like a home movie and the camera was old fashioned. I remember one spot where there is a long smooth wave to ride and the narrator notes that the wave was so long that he ran out of film, stopped shooting, changed the film, and was able to continue filming the surfer on the same wave.
As the film was made in 1966, it expressed a view of the world that is not politically correct today. For example, there are a lot of little jokes about the "natives" in an African tribe. But in spite of the words, it was obvious that everyone in the tribe enjoyed watching the surfers. Later, with the help of our surfers, these "natives" tried it themselves and soon were improvising their own surfboards.
There are a lot of beaches in the world. But the sport was perfected in Hawaii as pure recreation. That's the way the Hawaiians lived for centuries. Our two surfers came from California, a place very much influenced by Hawaiian surfers.
Other details about 1966 stood out and made me smile. For example, a luxury hotel in Senegal cost $30 per night, which they thought was outlandishly expensive. Gas cost $1.00 a gallon in Africa, a very high cost. And the hairstyles of the two light-haired and sometimes sunburned surfers were short and slicked back with lots and lots of grease. Also, the bodies of the surfers did not look like the surfers today. The two men had narrow chests and the musculature in their arms and legs was just enough to handle their surfboards. Obviously, they never worked out in a gym. They just rode those waves. And loved every minute of it.
This is a film that was made with the pure love of the sport. It is indeed a classic. And a "must" for anyone interested surfing.
Rating: - The Big Kahuna
This movie captures a time and a place, or should I say places, as Bruce Brown follows two surfers around the world in an endless summer of exotic locales including West Africa and the perfect wave in southern Africa, which never seemed to end. Surfing was a new thing in Cape Town and many would-be surfers flocked to see Hynson and August, but the best moments are the more candid ones such as in Senegal, when they turn over their boards to the locals and are amazed to see the chief get up on his first wave. The adventure takes in Australia, Tahiti and Hawaii as well, bringing them back to Malibu to close off what has to be the quentessential surfer's movie. Brown followed it up with Endless Summer II, but it lacked the spontaniety of the original as he went back to many of the same places many years later. This movie captures the romance of the big wave like no other movie, and is one you can watch over and over again.
Rating: - The ultimate surfer movie
Wow, this is one of those movies that those of us who watched it in 1966 when it was released are now proud to show to our own children - giving them an example of what a REAL surfing movie should be.
Shot as a documentary by Bruce Brown, it follows two surfers as they trek around the world, looking for the perfect wave. Do they find it? Contrary to our love of the ambiguous ending, yes, they do find it, down in South Africa on a beach where the wave starts at the tip and seems to go on and on and on, following the coast long enough that you think, by the time the surfers beach themselves, they'll probably need a taxi or a train to take them back to their point of origin.
There's not a huge story line, but that's an advantage. It allows Brown to focus on subtler themes: the sun, the ocean, friendship, travel, and a period of innocence which is gone forever.
This is definitely one to buy and to watch over and over and over.
Rating: - Friendship Forever
The "plot" of this film is almost absurdly simple: two clean cut, kind, affable guys touring the world in search of the perfect wave.
A previous review hit the nail on the head -- "Endless Summer" documents a time and place in American history that will likely never be repeated -- ever.
It's not the storyline that is unique, it is the innocence of its two lead characters, Robert August and Mike Hynson, and the absolute lack of any dramatic devices or political overtones in the film. Truly refreshing, and for the uninitiated, a revelation. It makes one realize the highest, most satisfying, most long-term form of relationship is indeed friendship.
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