surfboatdriver Many other viewers have said how much they loved this movie. I don't have the words it seems. I can say I agree. I have several favorite movies, this is another. How could I have never seen the movie? It was made in 1978 but the action is the mid sixties till the later seventies. I was a surfer in the mid sixties. I love surfer movies, OK, this is more of a growing up movie but it's about surfers. Well I wanted to pass along the one thing that caught me about watching this movie. Not all of the rides are the best rides of all time. Some are pretty good but the surfing is more good surfer as opposed to champion surfing. It's real. And another thing, the boards, those are the long boards we used in the sixties and the seventies. Just great. Walking the Board and Hanging Five were the Cat's Meow. They hit it big time on the nail head with Big Wednesday.

jim-314 John Milius's militant conservatism is somewhat subdued in this movie, though the movie was clearly made with a sense of nostalgia for a time when women and African-Americans knew their subjugated place and stayed there, and when going off to die pointlessly in an immoral war was seen as heroic and poignant. It's a film in which people who behave cruelly and stupidly are supposed to be viewed as charming. The script for the film is crude, predictable, and often unintentionally funny, especially in the portentous voice-over sections. The martial soundtrack, which tries to give the movie weight it otherwise lacks, is also unintentionally funny (I dare you not to laugh at the end when our three buddy-boy surfers march into the waves as to war, drums and trumpets blaring all up and down the beach). The performances are one-dimensional, though that's probably more the fault of the script than the actors. On the up side, the bodies are beautiful. Jan-Michael Vincent takes his shirt off as often as possible (as he tended to do in his younger days), and William Katt's youthful sculpted chest was a match for Vincent's. There's some great footage of water, and some fine surfing, though not enough for my taste. The climactic, final surf-scene is worth watching, despite the angsty bromance you have to endure to get there. It might be better with the sound off.

howard_tenke Big Wednesday & Endless Summer. There is no real way to compare the two however since Endless Summer is a documentary that follows a couple of California surfers as they search out the perfect waves around the world. Big Wednesday is the story of 3 guys as they come of age together and culminates in an actual big wave day that happened at Malibu. The characters are guys almost any surfer from the late 60's and early 70's can relate to because of the bonding that would take place on the water. Back then surfing wasn't about the big buck tournaments they have now it was time well spent with your compadres and the film reflected that time. Remake this movie...I hope not because it captured the essence of the California beach scene then and William Katt, Gary Busey and Jan Michael Vincent portrayed 3 very typical California surfers of the time, and it would be almost impossible to capture that spirit again.

faraaj-1 Big Wednesday has major weaknesses as a coming of age film which are made up for by some excellent surfing scenes, particularly towards the end. The plot, or whatever passes for a plot is trite and contrived - quite direction-less. Ideas and coming of age memories of the script writers seem to have been banded together with poor sense of characterization. The idea of showing a character aging by having a ridiculous mustache doesn't show a lot of maturity.However, surfing is at the soul of this film. The last 20 minutes are so good that even those not familiar with the sport would be intrigued. I can understand this being a cult favorite for surfers. The Vietnam drafting section was also something I hadn't seen in a film before and I found it educational.