steveylang

The premise of a divorced man hoping to redeem his past tragedies and mistakes through the purchase of his idyllic boyhood home, juxtaposed against a tribe of territorial local surfers that rebuff his efforts to reclaim his place in both a physical and existential sense, is a really great one.

Unfortunately the great premise, vibrant cinematography, and lush soundtrack are let down by clumsy execution and editing in The Surfer. The man's actions during his simultaneously slow and rapid descent into madness are not very well motivated within the story, and the plot turns in the final act feel largely unearned. This is borne out in the confusion evident in many of the reviews for this movie.

I had to think about this movie a bit before coming to my own conclusions. Sometimes this is good, such as when a movie's plotting or themes are intricate enough to deserve or inspire additional reflection after viewing. But other times it just feels like the movie is unnecessarily fighting you. The bones for a great story are present throughout The Surfer right until the very end, but I had to really ignore a lot of the movie to find them. I imagine that if I were to read the script, I would like it more than the movie itself.

The Surfer can just be enjoyed as sort of a gonzo, psychedelic thriller if you don't care to think about the characters and themes much, as it has some wonderful technical aspects. But you also might just find it frustrating, as the story has some great ideas but requires tolerating several clumsy aspects in its execution.

The good- pretty cool lore and set up for the unicorns. Promising father-daughter set up, some good satire of the rich and powerful. Will Poulter is the best of the cast.

The bad- The father's character development felt very unearned, most of the movie I was praying for his bloody comeuppance. The rich family was too one-note for the amount of screen time they get. CGI was noticeably mediocre but understandable for a low budget movie.

With a rewrite or two, and some more money for CGI and action sequences, this could have been a sleeper surprise with genuine sequel potential as I really did like what they did with the unicorns. But because most all the characters were one-dimensional, the movie drags in the middle third as you wait for the inevitable. When it does finally happen, it's somewhat entertaining but let down by its poor CGI, so-so action sequences, and clunky plot resolution. The first two are forgivable given its budget, the third is not.

I don't regret watching this movie, I just wish that it had lived up to its potential.

Wow, a lot of problems with this movie. Since this is approximately half of a decent superhero movie, I will give it 4 out of 10. I'm not going to bother with a plot synopsis since I don't remember most of the details any more (even though I just watched the movie), and don't want to bother looking them up.

Considering this is an origin story, none of the characters are well-developed at all, even the one given the most background and screen time (Reed Richards, the stretchy guy.) Most of the characters come across as rather pouty and petulant. I think the characters had potential but spend most of the movie reacting to everyone/everything around them, rather than doing/choosing anything on their own (individually or collectively as a group), and as a result seem undeverdeveoped and not very well characterized. At one point Reed Richards disappears for a year, we never actually learn what he is doing during that time. Weird.

The most egregious error is that so much time is (ineffectually) spent during the build-up, there is no time to establish the antagonist, and instead of a satisfying finally third of the movie we get a really quick battle scene to end the movie. I have read about problems between the director and the studio, but given how weak the final movie was I doubt a much better version could have been assembled during editing.

Many have criticized the movie as being too dark in tone. I actually don't mind the darker tone of the movie at all, in fact a different direction gives a superhero movie new possibilities and directions to explore. Too bad none of them were realized.