| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
Doug Pray's cool documentary about 85-year-old Dr. Dorian Paskowitz, his wife, and their eight sons and one daughter is about surfing insofar as surfing is the family's shared passion.
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| 91 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
How can a freethinking father mandate his ideals without violating them? Pray covers it all, and movingly so.
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| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Pray has a great story here, but it's much more than just "The Brady Bunch's Endless Summer."
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| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
It's a fascinating patchwork.
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| 80 |
Wall Street Journal
As you watch Doc Paskowitz perform for Mr. Pray's camera, it's hard not to judge him harshly. His narcissism seems boundless, even when he cloaks it in self-deprecation.
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| 80 |
The New York Times
Doug Pray’s wonderfully engaging look at love and family and the relentless pursuit of happiness, personal meaning and perfect waves.
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| 78 |
Austin Chronicle
Pray maintains a steadfastly objective viewpoint, and it's a testament to his film's success that it can accommodate the audience's inevitably shifting allegiances from one family member to the next.
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| 75 |
TV Guide
Chalk up another family for Leo Tolstoy and Philip Larkin file: The Paskowitz family is unhappy in its own unique way and mum and dad f**cked them up -- they didn't mean to, but they did.
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| 75 |
Boston Globe
The movie feels exhaustive in its loaded 90-something minutes, showing and telling us much while leaving the meaning of the tangles and twists in this family open to interpretation. For once, the tip of the iceberg is enough.
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| 75 |
San Francisco Chronicle
Presents an almost fawning portrait of the doctor-turned-surfer.
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| 75 |
Chicago Sun-Times
What are we to make of this existence? Doc sees himself a messiah of surfing, clean living and healthy exercise. We might be more inclined to see him as a narcissistic monster, ruling his big family with an iron fist.
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| 75 |
Chicago Tribune
Sid Smith
The film is a restrained, straightforward report about an iconoclastic family whose pain and dysfunction play out against a backdrop of tumbling ocean waves, muscular surfers and golden sunsets.
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| 75 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Filmmaker Pray, who is building an impressive body of documentaries on American subcultures, including the Seattle grunge scene in "Hype," graffiti artists in "Infamy" and truckers in "Big Rig," does an admirable job of allowing his subjects to represent themselves.
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| 70 |
Washington Post
John Anderson
Insightful, free-roaming but tautly constructed.
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| 70 |
The Hollywood Reporter
While the archival footage is fun, it's ultimately those bittersweet recollections of his equally energetic wife and adult children that give Surfwise its compelling edge.
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| 60 |
New York Daily News
Pray unfolds the family's story with patience and skill, making it both a compliment and a complaint to say that he leaves us wanting to know much more.
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| 60 |
Los Angeles Times
What Surfwise reveals is that the dark side of the surfing doctor was that he could be a terrible tyrant, someone whose controlling, self-centered rigidity limited his children in ways large and small as much as it gave them richer lives.
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| 60 |
Variety
Somewhat forced happy ending aside, the pic holds together well.
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| 50 |
Village Voice
Ella Taylor
Whether you call this a Rousseau-ian paradise or "Capturing the Friedmans" by the Sea will depend on where you stand on hippie living--up to a point.
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| 50 |
Chicago Reader
The fallout decades later provides the drama in this documentary by Doug Pray (Hype!), who lets his eccentric octogenarian subject off a little too easy.
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