Filmmaker Jack McCoy’s latest effort, Deeper Shade of Blue is very much up to his usual high technical standards. Perhaps because it’s in theatrical release across this weekend, it’s also something of a departure from the usual surf movie formula of wave, wave, wave, wave, funny stuff, wave, wave, wave that we all know and love.
It’s a tricky balancing act between an affectionate look at surf culture’s deep Hawaiian roots on the one hand, and on the other, for instance, spectacular big wave sequences from usual suspects Shippies and Chopes.
Jack’s gone for the surf movie convention of a series of sequences (there are 11 “chapters”) but has, I think, managed to link them up a bit more cohesively than we see in the average surf movie. As a surfer, I felt the waves to other content ratio was weighted in my favour – but I wanted more. My hunch is that non-surfing friends, family and significant others would probably find it an agreeable, if surf-heavy, way to pass a couple of hours.
As with any Jack McCoy movie, there were any number of memorable moments. For me, the sublime stylings of Derek Hynd’s finless board riding was a real stand-out. So too were the underwater sequences from Chopes and the insanity of Shipstern’s. No surf movie would be complete without at least a little dopey stuff, and for my money the best example of this was the cheerful (and highly skilled) goofing around of the Marshall brothers at Malibu.
Worth seeing?
Yep, definitely.
