Review
STEP INTO LIQUID
Starring Kelly Slater, Taj Burrow and Kenneth Collins
Directed by Dana Brown.
Opens Friday, October 24
Check listings
There seems to be an unwritten law for the sports-adventure films that typically fill IMAX screens. The more sublime the footage, the lamer the presentation. A quasi-sequel to the Endless Summer movies by director Dana Brown’s dad Bruce, Step Into Liquid is a surfing documentary that offers some choice thrills within a tsunami of platitudes and hyperbole.
Lucky for Brown that he delivers what any surf nut could ask for. Step Into Liquid features an all-star cast of surfers – including modern-day masters such as Kelly Slater, Taj Burrow and Kenneth "Skindog" Collins, as well as many lifers first seen in Brown Sr.’s The Endless Summer in 1966 – and a wide variety of locations and surf styles. Most dramatic are the sequences in which tow-in surf crews travel to sites far off the coasts of Hawaii and California to catch monster waves that top 60 feet in height. More modest waves are to be found in Texas, where surfers ride in the wake of supertankers, and Wisconsin, where a spot on Lake Michigan is just turbulent enough to attract otherwise landlocked enthusiasts.
Although the graceful moves of Brown’s subjects on the water are sometimes undermined by the slight content of the interviews, Step Into Liquid makes it easy to see why the sport has such a hold on these people’s lives. As one old-timer sagely notes: "It’s the ultimate spontaneous involvement in a natural medium."
Yet Brown’s incessant and relentlessly upbeat narration is a massive distraction, as is the score of fourth-rate alt-rock and wispy new-age dreck. The film’s more mawkish episodes – e.g., a Vietnam vet returns to surf Danang with his son and, Protestant and Catholic kids hang 10 together in Ireland – also precipitate a drop in adrenaline levels. Less talk and more action could have made Step Into Liquid a classic of the genre, but Brown’s movie still gives landsharks and wannabes enough of what they crave. |
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