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This one is funny!!!!!


Step Into Liquid


Laird Tube from " Step into Liquid " (Top Secret Production, LLC)




By John Anderson
Staff Writer

August 7, 2003, 12:33 PM EDT


(U). Surfing on the edge, at the far edges of surfing, is the subject of this visually striking but hyperbole-logged documentary. Not "The Endless Summer," although it does at times seem endless. Written and directed by Dana Brown. 1:28. At the Angelika, Manhattan.

The tropes of the surfing movie include athletic cinematography, awe-inspiring waves, muscular bodies doing impossible things and surfers talking about what a bad rap they get. I don't know what they mean, exactly, but maybe they wouldn't get this bad rap if they stopped making surfing movies.

"Step Into Liquid" was written and directed by Dana Brown, son of Bruce Brown, who made the landmark surf doc, "The Endless Summer" (1964). There are similarities between their work. The surfing often seems physically impossible; the land- and seascapes are stunning; the locations are a dream. And the voiceover is annoying. Dana Brown, kicking his father's style up a notch, has created, basically, an infomercial for surfing, a sport that wouldn't .really seem to need the hype. Nevertheless, every surfer he intro.duces seems to be the most "stoked" person he's ever met, every beach has the most treacherous waves, every location is the greatest this or that, and surfing itself is so deliriously euphoric you wonder how he ever found the time or inclination to make a movie.

What's genuinely intriguing about "Step Into Liquid," even if Brown doesn't quite emphasize it, is his exploration of what might be called extreme surfing -- "tow" surfing, in which a Jet Ski pulls participants to waves they wouldn't ordinarily reach. Or super.tanker surfing, in which surfers liter.ally travel miles on the wake of an oil carrier. Or off-off-off-shore surfing, in which true fanatics are taken 100 miles out to sea, to surf with no beach in sight.

What he finds in Sheboygan, Wis., where surfers hang 10 on Lake Michigan, might be called fringe surfing. Or 'burb surfing. Either way, it's funny.

But Brown doesn't have much of a sense of humor, or at least much facility at expressing it. One female surfer "spends so much time in the barrel," Brown says, referring to the underside of a breaking wave, "she's like a clown at the rodeo." Nyuh huh.

But Brown is also making a message film. Surfing not only is a sport that doesn't recognize racial or ethnic divisions, it can actually mend them: A surfing program in Ireland brings Protestants from the north to surf with Catholic kids from the south. It's wonderful, but a slightly less earth-shattering development than the director would have you think.

Because Brown comes off as propagandizing for surfing, it actually undermines his argument (if you can call it that). If surfing is so wonderful, why would it need such a relentless hyping of its virtues? It's the old show-don't-tell lesson that any fledgling filmmaker should know. And Brown's film has such stunning things to show, it's a shame he has to tell so much. If you do see "Step Into Liquid," bring a Discman, some Beach Boys CDs and drown this guy out.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.




http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/movies/ny-etstep0808.story