Turn on your radio in the 1960s... you'll get deluged with Surfin' Music from your favorite station.<br /><br />The Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, and a dozen other groups were singing about surfing.<br /><br />Go to the movies... There's Bobby Darren, Annette Funicello, and Sally Fields on the beach, soakin' up some rays (we hadn't heard about sun block or skin cancer yet...) and riding the waves in some quickie production whipped out for the Saturday night drive-in movie crowd.<br /><br />Like everyone else I was vicariously into the Surfer culture... it was irresistible. We knew all about Riding Pipeline, and The Green Cathedral dropping the lid on ya. We knew that wave sets came in cycles of seven, and that seventh wave was the most powerful... we learned everything there was to know about surfing from Jan and Dean when they sang RIDE THE WILD SURF...<br /><br />...It takes a lotta skill and courage unknown, To catch the Last Wave and ride it in alone... <br /><br />There was only one thing wrong with all of this. Most of us "surfers" were in places like Nebraska, and we'd never SEEN the ocean, let alone ridden the waves. We wouldn't have known the skeg of a surfboard from our own butts.<br /><br />The mindless fun of the Surfin' Craze died as the world moved on.<br /><br />The ugliness of a war in Southeast Asia grabbed our attention, and the Summer of Love urged everyone to wear flowers in their hair in Haight Asbury.<br /><br />Whatever happened to the Surfer culture in California after the attention of the rest of the world turned away? That's the question Big Wednesday answers.<br /><br />As one character in the film says, "NOBODY surfs FOREVER".<br /><br />This isn't a film like BEACH BLANKET BINGO... the beach party eventually ends and everyone has to grow up sometime. That's what Big Wednesday is all about.<br /><br />The film follows three friends... Matt (Jan Michael Vincent), Leroy the Masochist (Gary Busey), and Jack (William Katt). They're among the top surfers around, and as The Bear (Sam Melville) puts it... "...THEY can be the ones who draw the line. They can distinguish themselves".<br /><br />This is a Coming of Age movie... it gently and lovingly examines all of the mileposts in these three lives... the weddings, the acceptance of the responsibilities of adulthood, the paths through life that cause the three friends to go their own separate ways, the deaths. But all this time there's one point of commonality; the sea. Everything relates to it in the end... once a Surfer, always a Surfer.<br /><br />Not to be missed is the sequence where Matt, Jack and Leroy are ordered to report for their Army draft physicals! Anybody who had to go thru that craziness during the Vietnam era will immediately relate to the clash of bureaucratic insanity that tries to induct these guys, versus the creative insanity of the prospective inductees who desperately tried to escape the Army's dragnet... "Gentlemen, follow the yellow line on the floor. And Gentlemen, I assure you... it does NOT lead to the Land of Oz!".<br /><br />The most interesting character in the film is The Bear (Sam Melville). He's sort of a surfer's guru, the Wise Old Man who represents the old school surfers and passes on the lore and traditions of the past to this new generation. He makes their boards, and imparts the essence of the surfer culture.<br /><br />In Bear's shop we see framed black and white photos of Bear in his younger days, surfing Rincon on the early 1950s. We also see a velvet covered frame on the wall that contains a Bronze Star; presumably, The Bear was part of the generation that was taken from the beaches to serve in Korea.<br /><br />Whenever there's a moral or ethical question, it's The Bear that has the answers. At Bear's wedding, everyone drinks to the bride and groom, except Jack, who is a nondrinker. Bear urges him to break with tradition just this once... he points out that the toast is to friendship, and your friends are the most valuable thing you'll ever have.<br /><br />When Matt neglects his responsibilities to his wife and daughter and is well on the way to becoming an irresponsible, alcoholic bum, it's The Bear who sets him straight again.<br /><br />In a world of craziness and acting on impulse, The Bear is an anchor for them all... a role model that never changes or fails them.<br /><br />We see the clash of cultures as the three surfers grow older... they're becoming part of the past as the new wave of druggies and the psychedelic generation replaced the surfers in the public consciousness.<br /><br />Even in surfing the new generation has no respect for the old; in a surfing movie, a sequence featuring Matt is ridiculed by the audience; the old timers have been replaced by Jerry Lopez, the new generation's champion surfer.<br /><br />The world moves on.<br /><br />In the end... we see the final triumph. Legend talks about a big surf, so powerful that it'll wipe everything before it clean. Bear talked about it... and it's finally come, on Big Wednesday.<br /><br />The new generation is there to challenge the power of nature, lead by Lopez... and the three friends come together for one last ride.<br /><br />The water photographic unit got some amazing stuff, probably the best surfing footage ever shot. Frankly, I'm amazed that nobody died to get it.<br /><br />The film has the ring of reality to it, as it should... the director, John Milius, was part of the '60s Surfer generation, so the film is sort of autobiographical.<br /><br />Big Wednesday is work of love, executed with skill and intelligence.<br /><br />Thumbs Up all the way.