Ride the Wave

There is some startlingly impressive photography in this documentary that really does bring home the perils faced by anyone who makes their livelihood at sea. Some of the waves are taller than buildings, with enough power to flatten them too. The thrust of this follows the fourteen year old, and frankly pretty fearless, Ben Larg who might as well have webbed feet. He is nimble and agile riding the waves and his gritty determination comes across well. Snag? Well, there simply isn’t anything like enough action here. The majority of the rest of it focusses too closely on this rather un-charismatic teenager, his family, his training and is really quite dull. He has, like of us all at his age, very little to say and the acquisition of his first moustache makes him look a bit daft, too. It’s probably half an hour too long and after the initial impact of the imagery it dwindles away into something akin to a soap.