Swell (2019)

**_Poignant coastal trip from Santa Cruz to Astoria, Oregon_**

While the movie poster suggests this is a surfing film, it’s actually a road movie, although there are a couple of short surfing sequences. It comes in the tradition of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People” from fifty years earlier, just involving route 101 and the coast of the Great Northwest.

It’s similar to “Big Sur” (2013) minus the funereal tone, as well as “The Lucky Ones” (2008), “The Way” (2010) and “A Walk in the Woods” (2015). While it’s not nigh-great like “The Lucky Ones” it’s at least on par with the best of the other three.

The writer/director, Justin Lee, likes to include iconic actors in peripheral roles. Here it’s Corbin Bernsen and Adrienne Barbeau. Yet the story focuses on two best friends (Summer Spiro and Gabrielle Stone) and the two people they more-or-less team-up with on their journey (Brennan Murray and Kuali'i Wittman).

Some criticize it as schmaltzy, but it’s no more so than any of the films listed above. Remember, filmmakers usually have to condense days into a relatively short span of time, around 90-120 minutes. As such, the emotional high points and low points are emphasized for entertainment purposes.

It was shot along the coast of northern California to southern Washington, including Klamath and Crescent City, California; Port Orford, Prehistoric Gardens and Astoria, Oregon; and Cape Disappointment State Park, Washington. A couple of these locations are out of place in the movie; what I mean is Prehistoric Gardens is south of Port Orford, not north. Moreover, the group never makes it to the state of Washington, which is where Cape Disappointment is located, just across the mouth of the Columbia River. Obviously we’re to assume that that particular location is in Oregon.

Released in 2019, it runs 1h 35m.

GRADE: B