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Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

A Disappointing Continuation

Blistering performances.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

I've lived here in SoCal, and particularly here in Santa Barbara for a long enough time to recognize that there truly is a zen spirit and loyalty among the surfing community. The soul of the movie seems to be in the spirit of friendship and loyalty and the idea that you remain true to yourself, no matter where you go in the world. I liked it. Also, after seeing a biopic and reading about John Milius, the film seems to be an ode to his youth along the Malibu coastline and how it helped shape him into the man he became.

The lives of some California surfers from the early '60s to the '70s.Who should have been cast: Jan-Michael Vincent or Jeff Bridges? Well, in retrospect, Bridges might have drawn more acclaim to this picture. But Vincent nails the role, and although not as big of a name, he was the man for the job.John Milius is known for his conservative, manly films. This does not really mesh with the idea of the surfer, at least until you see this film. Then you understand that the surfer - to Milius - is a libertarian at heart, fighting against the "lifeguard state".The film features great music, great fights, and a nice cameo from a then-unknown Robert Englund. And heck, this is Gary Busey in his prime.Interestingly, because the film takes place during the Vietnam War, this acts like something as a counterpoint to "Apocalypse Now", another Milius film. What message are we to get from the two combined?

A friend of mine from work mentioned he just dug this film out of a pile of old movies sitting around at home, so I figured what the heck, bring it in and I'll take a look. My date of birth puts me about a decade earlier than the characters in this picture, but still within that baby boomer generation that the film was meant to appeal to. The picture takes a more mature approach than those beach blanket films of the Sixties when young adults had absolutely nothing to worry about. Here the main characters were about to face growing up and out of the sun culture they were so fondly a part of from the early Sixties into the mid-Seventies. The poignancy of the film is represented by local legend Matt Johnson's (Jan-Michael Vincent) unsteady growth out of his teen years, facing a wartime draft and the dissolution of his boyhood band of rowdies. Told from the view of a narrator who's never identified (unless I missed it), the story is told in a series of vignettes that time-jump in rough increments of three years at a time until the denouement of 'Big Wednesday' - that once in a lifetime confluence of moon and tides that produce the biggest waves ever to make their appearance on The Point, an area of California coastline where the story takes place.Seeing the movie's leads, Vincent, Gary Busey and William Katt is an interesting exercise in nostalgia for anyone who's golden age coincides with the Seventies. I don't know about Vincent and Katt, but Busey surely wouldn't fit into those swim trunks anymore. That ever present snarly smile of his was on display throughout a major portion of the picture.I guess if surfing's your thing, this will be an entertaining flick, weaving a handful of the era's great songs into the soundtrack - tunes like 'Locomotion', 'That's What I Want' and 'He's a Rebel' - all cleverly placed to counterpoint the action on screen and the attitudes of the main players. The surfing scenes at the finale are what you'll want to stick around for as the film's hero trio take that last ride into the sunset, figuratively speaking. It's what everyone in the story was waiting for, the Big Wednesday of their lives that could only be described in the jargon of the surfer - "It's a Boss Swell".

I first saw this when it came out. As a surfer, I looked forward to it, and was disappointed. I just watched it today on Netflix and was even more disappointed! The unbelievable house party scene was probably what really highlighted how Hollywood fantasizes too much about how they think either the world is, was, or should be. It was kind of funny to see Gary Bussey play essentially himself in this movie, after rewinding in my head the news stories of the past 30 years about him. The Endless Summer movies still are the best at depicting what surfing is about, despite the many corny scenes thrown into them. The attempts of Big Wednesday to depict teens maturing into adults just fell flat. I wish I hadn't wasted another 2 hours watching this movie again.