As director Dana Brown’s surf documentary, Step into Liquid, rolled and my questions about the on-screen material multiplied exponentially, I began to wonder if I was wrong to judge the project as an actual film. With no hint of a plot or any thematic connection between the scenes, it seemed as though Step into Liquid was nothing more than a compilation of shots of people surfing.

Movies like this have their place–most can be found behind the counter at your neighborhood skate or surf shop–and aren’t necessarily a bad way to spend two hours of your time. However, Step into Liquid differs from these dime-a-dozen movies because it attempts to take itself seriously. And watching Brown frantically try to justify his movie’s existence throughout the film’s 87 minute running time is occasionally pathetic (especially when Brown shows a short scene of the Irish Protestants and Catholics getting along better because they’re surfing together).

However, Brown’s most egregious misstep in Step into Liquid came with his decision not to offer details of any kind about anything shown on screen. The best example of this comes when surfer Laird Hamilton and his Hawaii based entourage are shown surfing on foil boards. Foil boards are essentially snowboards attached to a two-foot long rudder with a ‘T’ at the bottom of it. Designed in order to let the surfers get above the chop of the stormy ocean waves, it was positively amazing to see Hamilton surfing a forty-foot wave some distance above the water’s surface. No explanation is given for how the foil board works other than Hamilton’s rather dreamy interpretation, "It harnesses the power of the wave below the surface." As I let the technical nature of this statement settle into my brain, I was hit with the following sentence from a cohort of Hamilton’s: "It’s like surfing a cloud." And the classroom portion of the film is over.

Step into Liquid is gorgeous to watch and probably unparalleled in terms of capturing big wave surfers doing their thing, but is so choppy and poorly narrated that a major letdown is practically guaranteed.