North Shore

William Phelps's 1987 film is about a young surfer who travels from Arizona to Hawaii. Rick has won a contest on an artificial wave in a pool and thinks he can do the same in the real ocean; arriving on the north shore of Oahu he finds that neither the waves nor the local surfers want him. An older board shaper tries to teach him that surfing is not a matter of technique but of reading the ocean. The film takes the sport itself seriously and most of the wave work was done by real surfers, with well known names of the period appearing. The story follows a standard youth shape: the outsider who arrives, is excluded, learns and is accepted. The tension between locals and visitors is treated superficially. Who it's for: viewers who like surf films and youth pictures of the eighties. Who it's not for: anyone expecting an original story; the film follows a familiar road.