You didn’t really just give me a stock footage reaction scene, did you? Do you want me to hate your film? Because that’s a pretty good vehicle to get me there. Chasing Mavericks is a surfing movie. The plot involves getting an alienated teen to move further away from the pack by teaching him skills useful only to career loafers. That’s not quite fair. The skills are also useful to glory hounds. Anyway, part of the toughening up involves making Jay (Jonny Weston) spend some QT below salt water. And while he’s there … oh no! A shark comes! Except, of course, that it wasn’t there. This was b-roll of a shark and I was left consciously aware of underwater overacting. Yes, I said that on purpose.
While I’m there, why do movies insist on pissing me off in scene #1? What did I do to you? Oh yeah, this. But hey! I don’t destroy you, generally, until after your sour stench permeates the soft membrane of quality entertainment and festers like wet laundry in an ill-ventilated sack.
It’s possible I’m being too harsh.
Let me ask you: if you saw an eight-year-old boy and girl playing by themselves on a sea cliff, what question would first spring to mind? Help me out, folks, can I get a: “where are their parents?” And after the boy nearly drowns and gets rescued then released into the wild by the neighborhood Samaritan/drifter 
“Frosty” (Gerard Butler), I still don’t know the complete answer to the parents question. And that bugged me almost as much as the fact that Chasing Mavericks named a character “Frosty” as if that’s ok, ‘cause, dude, it’s like a surf movie and stuff.
The boy grows up to be high-school surf enthusiast Jay, a drifter-in-training and the 21st century Christopher Atkins. Atkins got to share a Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields. Weston gets to share a surfboard with Gerard Butler. Them’s the breaks, kid. Fascinated by the monster maverick surf waves, Jay turns a passion for danger into a Big Brother opportunity when he stows away on top of Frosty’s van. Frosty miyagis Jay for the remainder of the this combination montage & video tour guide of the Northern California coast.
Chasing Mavericks has this odd way of couching an irresponsible premise as the seeds of growth and development. Jay learns discipline. Woo! Frosty learns how to be a father. Yee! But what for? So you both can shirk duties to people who count on you? I mean, who pays you to ride these waves? You do schoolwork for your hobby, but blow off actual school to do it? Just wait until you see the conclusion to this thing; it left me empty as the center of a bagel. You are learning advanced irresponsibility from a man who uses his hobby to escape, not to connect. And that’s exactly where I am at the end of Chasing Mavericks: disconnected.
A surfing teen loser by day
Needed dad in the very worst way
He followed this shape
Of Frosty the ape
Oh, if only I could livelikeJay(.com)
Rated PG, 109 Minutes
D: Michael Apted, Curtis Hanson
W: Kario Salem, Jim Meenaghan & Brandon Hooper
Genre: Two hour montage
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Surfers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Teachers
