‘Endless Summer II’: It Surfs Most of Those Dudes Right

In “The Endless Summer II,” old-time surfer-filmmaker Bruce Brown follows adolescent surfer dudes Wingnut and Patrick around the world as they retrace his steps in his 1964 quest for the world’s gnarliest wave, revisit cult surf heroes and pass out in the sand after totally tubular parties. (Rated PG-13)

Thirty years is a long time, culturally speaking. The kids who came to watch this nostalgic sequel weren’t born when the cult classic first came out. Can they relate?

Absolutely--if they’re guys, if they surf, or if they like buddy movies. Otherwise, you have to like travelogues with lots of shots of surf, surf riders, skimpy bathing suits near the surf or corny, surf-related commentary. (Example: animals in exotic habitats watching surfers are heard thinking, “I smell short-boarders.”)

Chris Baezwinkelman, an 11-year-old who missed the first “The Endless Summer,” was taken aback by the documentary format. “I thought it was going to be mostly a story and not really an autobiography,” he said. “It’s mostly somebody else telling the story and watching two other people doing what they want to do. But I still liked it. It was pretty good.”

He had come to see another movie but ran into a dozen schoolmates who, helmets and roller-blades in hand, decided to do some male bonding, sixth-grader style, at the surf movie.

Most agreed with Chris Hendricks, also 11, that you had to be into surfing to get it.

“If you don’t surf, you wouldn’t like it,” he said.

“There was a lot, a lot of surfing,” added Jeff Hegness, 12.

The scenery--of Costa Rica, France, South Africa, Fiji and Indonesia--interested Jeff, who said he had just been studying the continents. “We knew some of the towns and stuff, and it was really neat to see them, like Cape Town in South Africa.”

But if, as this movie suggests, the surf culture hasn’t changed, the rest of the world has surely changed around it. To bedeck a Zulu in surf garb or to complain that no one on an Indonesian fishing boat speaks English seems churlish now.

And while narrator Brown explains in the beginning that many girls have taken to the waves, women are mostly absent from the rest of the movie except in bars, or as topless bathers whose “zoomers” make the boys lose their concentration on the waves.

Please.

Chris, a surfer who goes to surf contests and subscribes to Surfer magazine, said he preferred the original “Endless Summer.” That movie, which cost $50,000 to shoot, appeared more as if it had been filmed by the two globe-hopping surf buddies.

In this one, which cost $3.4 million, the buddies are clearly backed up by a substantial crew. When, for instance, they are surrounded by lions and their car runs out of gas, you wonder how much danger are they really in if the crew keeps on filming.

“The reason I liked the other one better,” he said, “is that they were both kids and they were just doing it for the fun of it. They weren’t doing it for the money. They just took a camera out there and did it. It was an original idea.”

Besides, he said, he liked the idea of seeking and finding the perfect wave. This time, the thrills were there, but the magic was gone.