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Riding Giants
Metascore
80 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 28 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 27 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 28
  3. Negative: 0 out of 28
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  1. Portland Oregonian
    Reviewed by: Staff (Not credited)
    100
    A more sober, less in-your-face documentary than Peralta's great skateboarding flick.
  2. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Ann Hornaday
    100
    An exhilarating, often mind-blowing history of surfing.
  3. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    91
    Traces the sport to its Polynesian beginnings, then zooms in on the genesis of 20th- century Southern California surf culture -- the boards, the bikinis, the laid-back cowabunga.
  4. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Bill White
    91
    May well be the most thrilling and educational surfing movie ever.
  5. Film Threat
    Reviewed by: Pete Vonder Haar
    90
    One of the best surfing documentaries ever filmed.
  6. L.A. Weekly
    Reviewed by: Joe Donnelly
    90
    The Maverick's sequence is perhaps Giants' most viscerally exciting and poignant.
  7. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    90
    Every sport, and every sports film, must have its superman. The role is filled here by Laird Hamilton, who, we are told -- and, more astonishingly, shown -- took "the single most significant ride in surfing history." Seeing is believing.
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  8. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    90
    By land or by sea, there aren't many movies that can move you like that.
  9. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Bill Stamets
    90
    This is vicarious cinema at its best.
  10. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    Riding Giants is about altogether another reality. The overarching fact about these surfers is the degree of their obsession.
  11. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Jonathan Foreman
    88
    Magnificent if overlong and oddly structured surfing documentary.
  12. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    88
    For those dazed and dazzled by surf anarchists Noll and Clark, Hamilton comes off as the sport's technocrat, but he boldly goes where no surfer has gone before.
  13. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    88
    Giants has SO many insistent high points, in fact, that its breathlessness threatens to turn monotonous.
  14. Baltimore Sun
    Reviewed by: Chris Kaltenbach
    88
    The risks these guys take seem outlandish, their accomplishments otherworldly.
  15. Empire
    Reviewed by: Adam Smith
    80
    This story is emblematic of the passion, obsession and solitary poetry of surfing.
  16. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Nathan Rabin
    80
    It's a film hopelessly in thrall to the thrill of big-wave surfing, and for all its rambling shapelessness, it conveys that excitement in an infectious, conspiratorial manner.
  17. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Benjamin Strong
    80
    Peralta has become a more relaxed filmmaker, and when he trusts the haunting sight of a giant wave breaking to speak for itself, the movie reaches the sublime heights of its subject.
  18. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    80
    Because the waves get progressively higher in Riding Giants, Stacy Peralta's historical surfing documentary, some of that thrill is sustained throughout this overlong but entertaining movie.
  19. Variety
    Reviewed by: Scott Foundas
    80
    Offers a highly engaging immersion into a culture of larger-than-life characters driven by their thrill-seeking instincts.
  20. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Allison Benedikt
    75
    It's the tales from Noll and his mates, now older and chubbier, that give heart to what otherwise could have faded into PBS special-land.
  21. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Rene Rodriguez
    75
    Every time Riding Giants starts feeling a little too insidery for casual viewers, along comes another, even bigger wave, daring these puny mortals to conquer it.
  22. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Jack Mathews
    75
    A breathtaking visual history of big wave surfing. This is vicarious daredevilry at its best.
  23. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Carla Meyer
    75
    Offers a thrilling, informative history of a sport-subculture.
  24. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    70
    Peralta includes amazing archival footage to demonstrate just how far surfing in general permeated American popular culture, but also narrows his focus to follow the evolution of the surfboard itself.
  25. Dallas Observer
    Reviewed by: Bill Gallo
    70
    Stacy Peralta may think otherwise, but this 101-minute homage to the heroes of surfing is nothing if not a monument to their self-absorption--and to his own. That's probably inevitable.
  26. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    70
    For those who do enjoy being smacked around by the ocean, for those who thrill to the romance and hype of extreme surfing and dig the outsider aspect of this rarefied culture or at least its marketed cool, this film will likely be their ticket to ride a board by proxy.
  27. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Liam Lacey
    63
    Too long by about 20 minutes, and arguably too obsessed with the lineage of names only of interest to other surfers, this is a vicarious kick.
  28. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    40
    There is plenty here to enjoy for beach bums and fans of bikinis and six-pack abs, but others are likely to find themselves hopeless wet blankets.
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