North Shore is a real cult classic, a movie that you might have never heard of (unless obscure 80s films are what you normally seek out), with a little known cast (especially if you're unfamiliar with obscure 80s movie or 80s pro surfers), but that turns out to be surprisingly popular among a particular group of fans.
If you do enjoy obscure 80s movies and surfing adventures, then I would highly recommend checking out North Shore. Despite the surf-styled Romeo and Juliet and sports movie cliché, this movie has a lot to offer as far as a likable cast (especially John Philbin), tremendous action sequences, and a slick soundtrack to make it what I consider to be one of the best non-documentary surf movies.
Adorable Matt Adler plays Rick Kane, a recent high school grad fresh from the wave tanks of Arizona, who uses his winnings from a small contest to travel to the famous North Shore to surf the season. As he explains to his mom, who cautions that he has a scholarship awaiting him at a New York art school, that he has to find out now just how good of a surfer he could be. But, he's a cocky little novice, thinking he is just going to show up on the beaches and make himself famous. Things are much different than he expects and he's in for sort of a rude awakening.
When he arrives in Hawaii, he almost immediately encounters trouble, getting his stuff stolen by a gang of protective locals (featuring pro-surfer Gerry Lopez as Vince). As a result, Kane befriends surfboard shaper Turtle (John Philbin is perhaps the best character, and certainly the funniest, in the whole film), and his boss, Chandler (Gregory Harrison), who agrees to put him up at his place if Kane helps him redesign his company logo. With Chandler's sort of wise guidance, Kane gets some valuable guidance, which helps him among the locals and most importantly, with his surfing, as Chandler teaches him that old soul-surfer style. In the end, Kane becomes a good enough surfer to compete in the famous, but dangerous, Pipeline World Classic against some of the pros he idolizes (especially Lance Burkhart, played by pro-surfer Laird Hamilton).
The thing I enjoyed most when I had first seen this movie was the excellent photography. For those who had seen the movie on the old cable channel, Encore, the movie was accompanied with a sort of making-of documentary which explained all of the novel cinematography techniques used here. I have not yet seen the special features of the DVD to see if this was added, but nonetheless, it worked brilliantly, and you can really appreciate the surfing, even if you don't surf. The footage of Hawaii, too, is stunning.
Second, the relatively unknown cast has a lot of appeal. Matt Adler, who previously played Louis in 'Teen Wolf' or Jeff Freeman in 'Flight of the Navigator' (roles that he may be better remembered in) plays the lead, Rick Kane. Nia Peeples replaced another actress mid-shooting for the role of Rick's love interest, Kiani. Gregory Harrison, sort of hamming it up at moments, plays Chandler, Rick's mentor. But the best of all is John Philbin as the hilarious, good-natured Turtle. Also look for pro-surfers Laird Hamilton as Lance Burkhart, Gerry Lopez as Vince Moaloka, Robbie Page as Alex Rogers, Mark Occhilupo as Occy, and many others (especially in the Pipeline contest at the end).
And, finally, you have a pretty good soundtrack (of hard-to-find songs, unless you search hard on peer-to-peer networks) featuring Killing Joke, Chris Issak, Black Uhru, and my personal favorite, Australian rock band 'Gangajang' (their video for "Sounds of Then" can briefly be seen when Rick first goes to Burkhart's house with Alex and Occy).
They left it open for a sequel (Kane, at the end, says "Hey, I'll be back), but nothing ever came of it.
Aside from some of the slang, it's not even that dated. Overall, if you can get past some of the corniness and cliché, it may likely be one that you can watch over and over again.
