Surfwise

What would it be like to have Johnny Utah as a dad? Trained as a doctor at Stanford, Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz one day underwent an existential crisis and left the world of medicine for a life of surfing and living out of an RV, taking along his wife, Juliette, and their nine kids. Doc believed that real wisdom could be gained only through this kind of simple, on-the-go lifestyle. Now the tykes are all grown up, and are still trying to sort out whether Doc’s philosophy was a brilliant example of unorthodox child-rearing or just plain abusive. Doug Pray’s film isn’t so much a simple surfing movie as it is an engrossing portrait of a singular American family.