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‘The Surfer’ Review: Nicolas Cage Goes Full Cage in a Trippy Slapdash Comic Nightmare
He plays a desperate dad who squares off against Aussie surf jocks in a midnight movie that grows increasingly surreal.
“The Surfer” is one of those comedies of masochism where everything, almost by cosmic design, goes wrong for the protagonist, as if everyone were on a conspiracy against him — the genre of “What About Bob?” and “Neighbors” and Oliver Stone’s “U-Turn,” a form that stretches back to “Green Acres.” The incipient stoned surrealism is reinforced by token bits of hallucinatory imagery, mostly shots of lizards and porcupines and aerial screensaver views of aqua waves. The main bay boy, an athletic middle-aged dude named Scally (Julian McMahon), turns out to be the head of a local men’s cult where the mantra is, “You can’t surf if you don’t suffer.” What this means is that the Cage character has to hit bottom to purge himself, to come out the other side of his pain and his yuppie dream.
Or read this on Variety