Windrider (1986)

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

It seems like they made a movie like this for every cool activity in the 80s, and since windsurfing was at the height of its popularity it got the treatment too. Think Top Gun with much lower stakes and one tenth the budget. Despite a bad script and some marginal acting, I actually enjoyed this movie. Forget about the cliché plot and you can actually get a kick out of the clothes and hair and all the other 80s elements. The film is shot in Australia so for an American it was fun to pick out the cultural differences as well. Also, Nicole Kidman stars as a rock star, putting on a good performance and giving the film an excuse to fill the soundtrack with some era appropriate synth cheese. The windsurfing scenes will only appeal to the real hard core since the sport has changed so much in the last couple decades, but again I enjoyed the look back.

Maybe I shouldn't be writing this because I only watched the first half before realizing that it wasn't my kind of movie. However, it might be someone's else's, someone who enjoys beach party movies with plots, actions, some wit, and a teen-aged Nicole Kidman.Burlinson is a computer engineer or something at his dad's company. He comes up with a design for a theme park built around artificial waves. The surfers will go ape. They'll all try to do a "360," which I gather is flipping your sailboard around in a complete circle in the air above a breaking wave. That's a guess. Whatever it is, it has to be done on a sailboard and it's difficult.Burlinson manages to pull it off one afternoon but nobody is around to see him except the distant figure of Kidman. Burlinson's mates in the pub ridicule him so he sets out on a search for Kidman, who is a rock queen. She gets to sing an entire fast pop song, her voice almost buried in electronic percussion and guitars, all bathed in a blood-red light. You can see why it requires a certain taste to enjoy this past the point of no return.I wondered, while listening to the airy and up-tempo dialog, if American kids will get some of the allusions and jokes. Burlinson's nickname is "PC". It stands for "Police Car." Why is he called that? Because he's always chasing sirens. Sirens? Worse yet, somebody quotes Voltaire.However, I expect that the sensibilities of our teens will roughly discard these sorts of challenges because by the time they realize that they didn't understand it, they'll have already forgotten it.Besides, the dialog won't be as important as the many surfing scenes, the amiably reckless attitude of Burlinson, and the sassy, brassy Kidman, who was only eighteen when this was shot. She has a head of curly black hair that flops around with her, big enough to have its own weather system. She's a lot of fun. She hadn't been turned into the epitome of vacuous blond perfection that Hollywood would do it's best to achieve, but she can act and she embodies the role.There are amusing allusions to "Jaws" in the writing -- not just the dialog -- some often amusing. Just as often, it's not. I didn't get a kick out of watching Burlinson prepare a fast breakfast while the camera cuts back and forth from the frying egg to the countdown on the microwave. It wasn't offensive, just pointless.

Saw this late on ABC, can see why they put it on in middle of night. This is amateur hour, watching this 'car crash',the dialogue, editing and special effects - shark/seal scene! - get worse and worse. When the 2 larrikins get honked by garbage truck and their retort is "Up yours, garbage breath", scriptwriters! Then when there is a drag between PC and the yobbos the dueling banjos start. Only interest is seeing young Kidman, Matt Parkinson and Alan Dale (Dr Karl) ironically in the band, Karl nursing muso ambitions early on.On a side note, it would be more helpful and balanced if negative and positive reviews were put up as it seems that user reviews are only added when someone really likes the film. This leaves the user reviews unbalanced and some 'terrible' films get very high rating. Subjective, of course

I have just watched this movie on late-night TV & it reminds me of when I saw it the 1st time at the Beechboro Drive-in in Perth's north eastern suburbs back in 1986/87 as an 18yr old. It was good then, but much better now, 24 years later. Only a local would pick up on the scene backgrounds that were far from accurate, e.g. when they were filming the final sequence off Trigg Beach, when you saw the coast from the water there was no crowd, or buildings even, as the actual windsurfing would've been shot further north beyond the suburbs. The film is a great period piece that any Aussie would enjoy.. the clothes, the hairstyles, the cars, etc. Tom & Nicole are definitely very cute together. If you have never been to Perth, as the movie shows, there is plenty of beaches & plenty of sun. I loved seeing the movie again.