Rent Big Wednesday (1978)

Surf, Drift, Repeat - Big Wednesday review by griggs

I was glad I’d watched The Endless Summer a couple of months back before tackling Big Wednesday. Without that crash course in surf culture — the jargon, the obsession, the ritual — I’d have been adrift, since surfing itself holds little appeal for me. Even with that context, the film never quite pulled me in.

The story of three friends drifting into adulthood should feel weighty, but it often plays more like scattered fragments than a cohesive whole. There are glimpses of surfing, parties, and scraps, yet they already feel like memories rather than lived experience, the golden years sketched too thinly before the film insists they’re gone. Instead of melancholy, it sometimes just feels flat.

Things tighten toward the end, but the sense of distance remains. It’s not the thrill of riding waves or the ache of passing time, just a film that drifts along without ever fully catching.