The Endless Summer II: The Journey Continues

Nearly 40 years ago, Bruce Brown's wave-riding documentary The Endless Summer (1966) introduced the world to surfing, a subject to which he returned in 1994 with The Endless Summer II. Following champ surfers Robert "Wingnut" Weaver, who does nifty new tricks with an old-fashioned "long board," and Pat O'Connell, who's determined to travel until he's out of money, Brown searches the globe for the perfect wave. An adventurous travelogue featuring all the places you'd expect--Costa Rica, France, South Africa, Australia, the Fiji Islands, Indonesia (and some you might not, such as Alaska, where you have to compete with bears for access to the water; and landlocked central Texas, where there's a waterpark that makes an artificial standing wave)--this is a beautifully shot, exhilarating film that receives short shrift on this barebones DVD presentation, disappointingly released in a full screen format (sucking some of the drama from the long ocean waves) with a simple stereo soundtrack that in some places sounds like single-channel mono. Extras include static bios of the two surfer boys, a scrapbook of still photos in which no person or place is identified, two uninformative and redundant “making of” shorts, and a recent interview with Brown and Weaver that looks like it was shot in someone's basement with a home camcorder. Wipeout. Optional. (M. Johanson)