Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Pretty Good

Nice effects though.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

I grew up in the South West of Western Australia where this was filmed. I could relate well to the material and clearly Simon Baker has a love for the material as well. This is essentially a 'coming of age' movie.

Loved it. Having grown up in Western Australia in the 70's I loved every bit of this movie. Every bit that I could relate to that is. The feeling of being dumped in the surf, the chopper style pushies with banana seats, the poppity clatter of an old Kombie motor, the sandy WA bush, slipping on the rocks, the feeling of going up and over a wave just before it breaks, the rush of catching a wave, dancing badly at the school social, suntanned young skin, holding a girls hand, getting up at dawn to go surfing.. and of course, holding my breath under water just that bit too long. Couldn't help but not relate to avocado's in WA in the 70's.. I don't ever remember them.. and I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to WA number plates.. the Kombi had black plates with white characters. The number format was right, even the first letter U was authentic, but sorry I don't ever recall black background with white letters.

I looked forard to this movie and expected to enjoy it asthe latest high quality Aussie drama. I know the area it was filmed in intimately. I really think that if I had not recognised the backdrops I would have enjoyed the movie less and would have given it a score of 1. The surfing sequences are really well filmed - made me sit and think about how the cameraman must have captured the scene. They created the feelings of doom, bravery and fear. That said, there was little else good here. Not much reflected believable real life, it suffered from the Australian affliction of "one scene and one prolonged look into the mid-distance says more than a 1000 words". It's all been done before. Even the leading lady (supposedly the smouldering star's wife?) fell into this trap - why did she suddenly want to home shool this teenager. I worried about the fact that the kid was proably below the age of consent. The story meandered, there were unecessary scenes (the truck crash with the shot cow - what did it relate to?). But the gratuitous plastic bag scenes, as others have mentioned - why, why, why include these. I do see that others would see that it was used to show the wife's loss of enjoyment of living normally. It added a nasty undertone which was superfluous. Where were the women in the movie- they were just food or sex providers. I admit that I do not enjoy Tim Winton's output but even he must have slepwalked through the screenplay.

A coming of age novel, for years this book languished on my bookshelves in spite of the exhortations from my daughter to read it. In expectation of seeing the film, I read it over a weekend and was captivated although wasn't a fan of Tim Winton before I read "Breath". The film is faithful to the book apart from the sanitizing of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Spoiler alert so I won't say any more. The film is masterful: Simon Baker's direction and his performance as Sando is believable and superlative; the young men playing Pikelet and Loonie are superb; the cinematography is beyond belief. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Debicki lets the side down. Looking like a younger, blonde version of Cher, she is barely audible or intelligible. Nonetheless this is a stunning contribution to the Australian film industry's history. Four stars.