Newcastle Australia

It's summer in 2008 in the city of Newcastle, Australia, the world's largest coal port, and the surf's up on fine sand beaches flanked by massive coal ships and floating dockyards. Luckily, neither shades nor songs of Frankie Avalon or Cliff Richard mar the scene.

Writer-director Dan Castle revisited a genre with major appeal in Australia (and Japan, from which some production funds were obtained): surfing. His major variation on the usual scenario is the inclusion of a happily out gay teenager with purple hair streaks and fingernails, an amused mum and a not-so-accepting step-father.

The boy supplies side-plots through his hots for a tolerant surfing buddy, and his efforts to play the sport that obsesses his two straight older brothers. The oldest is a washed-out past champion, a boozer separated from a wife and kid, now an anti-social port labourer. The middle brother is 17, golden-curled, eager to be a touring pro surfie and subject to moody fits.

Add a trio of close buddies (one rich, one cheekily comic), and two sexy girls who join them all for a weekend beach party, and you've got the expected: a pair of hetero couplings in a tent, an uneventful chat about gay things like star formations, a death at sea, and success for the wannabee surfie. Just so the movie could offer an outing for the whole family, there's also a young-at-heart grandfather-figure (veteran Barry Otto, trying to smile painlessly).

Castle then went overboard with hand-held cinematography in the waves, rollers and murky depths, lingering shoreline shots capturing brilliant blue skyscapes and shimmering dunes, and a soundtrack that adds melodramatic ham to a bland salad of sun-toasted teens obliged by the Aussie-coded screenplay to frolic (only full-dorsally) on the beach cupping their genitalia.

As with any modern Australian movie, audiences will look for a new generation of budding Crowes, Ledgers or Pearces on the screen. The country has produced many excellent directors too, but Castle needs to prove his talent on different material. His previous work comprised The Visitor, a 30-minute 2002 surfing tale with a fully homosexual theme (and Barry Otto's name on the poster), Zona Rosa, a 2005 documentary ogling male strippers in Mexico City's gay nightclub district, and other gay short films.

Casting decisions inevitably hinged on actors' surfing abilities, and 18-year-old Lachlan Buchanan (younger brother of a busy Aussie TV actor) had them as well as good looks and physique (and is now chasing the dream in Los Angeles). The choice of the actor to play his supposedly younger brother was less effective: Xavier Samuel presents the character's gaiety credibly, but close-ups reveal his 24-year-oldness.

The film was the first for Ben Milliken, who's since done work in the US and on other surfie features (including the Blue Crush sequel). The one actor with a more interesting role (the non-surfing gawky group jester) and stronger, offbeat screen presence, Israel Cannan, hasn't had another film credit since this. The bad guy (the older surfie brother) was well played by Bosnian-Australian Reshad Strik, and he may be the best name for Crowe-hunters to watch.