Sons of Summer

Part surfing movie part thriller the film is kind of a sequel to Avalon's Summer City released 46 years ago the premiere of which I attended. What I loved about it was in part the nostalgic elements as it referenced the original film which starred a few unknown actors like Steve Bisley and Mel Gibson. This film manages to work as a study of Australian mateship and the contemporary surfie culture that has existed in Australia for decades. The surf sequences are dazzling and elegant and the movie moves with a taut briskness. One hopes it gets publicity on home turf and finds an audience. In the US the movie is playing in select AMC theaters and on demand through Apple etc. Grade B.

The scenery and surfing is great, the plot has a good story line and is carried really well by the main actors being Temura Morrison and Joe Davidson. Alex Fleri has some really good action shots and is believable in his part.

Isabel Lucas parts her part well, but her part could have had many more exciting and meaningful scenes which would have highlighted her part, I believe most movies require good female scenes to bring the movie "home".

Plently of ocean shots and some excitingly good surfing is captured - so if you like to watch surfing close to a beach with a good story line and good waves then you'll love this movie.

Because if you do, let me tell you, Sons of Summer isn't it.

Based on the flimsiest of pretexts, four surfers whose fathers were friends 30 years ago decide to go on a road trip together along with a huge quantity of drugs one of them has stolen from a local paint-by-numbers gangster. There's no connection between the characters, the acting is as wooden as their surfboards, the plot has holes you could drive a bus through, the cinematography reminds me of the sort found in Aussie movies from 40 years ago, and the whole thing has the feel of an overly long episode of Home and Away directed by someone who loved Baywatch as a kid.

It's not as if Sons of Summer falls into that "so bad it's good" category, it's just an awful, awful movie.

After some awfully hamfisted exposition, 4 friends (seemingly only friends because their Dads are mates) decide on a road trip for a very weakly established plot point. Along the way they make terrible decisions and act like they're in a first time community theatre production. I can't stress this enough- this is awful and my best guess is someone did this as a favour to someone who needed money laundered. There's NO reason. For this film to exist. Not so bad it's good, just bad. Not enough substance here to write anything more on the film so I'll end on saying Rasputin by Bony M is a killer track.

Now I have got to waste 600 letters on a review when the title should already says everything. I actually only bothered to watch this movie seeing that the score was 7.2 on Imdb. How it ever got there is a mystery to me. The whole thing is an amateurisch mess. The acting was incredibly bad. The characters behaved in a complete illogical way. The introduction and what was supposed to be the headline in this movie about a murder committed 30 years earlier played no role whatsoever in the story. We have a two man mafia going about like a chicken with no head. I can only advice against wasting your time on this trash. There are some nice shots of wave riding, but that shouldn't serve as an excuse to watch this trash.