SunnyHello Nice effects though.

Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

adonis98-743-186503 When young Jay Moriarity discovers that the mythic Mavericks surf break, one of the biggest waves on Earth, exists just miles from his Santa Cruz home, he enlists the help of local legend Frosty Hesson to train him to survive it. Chasing Mavericks is what i like to call "truly inspiring" cause it really is and both leading men Jonny Weston and Gerard Butler have a great chemistry together and it really feels realistic but it's also touching and threw the heart many times. Jay's relationship with his girlfriend, his mother and his coach all come full circle in the end when he gets to face the big wave and it's just terrific not just as a film but as a story as well it's real and it's not fiction plus it's amazing how sometimes fate can turn on you. Chasing Mavericks is a movie that every movie lover and surfer love should check out and you will definitely enjoy it. (10/10)

cinemajesty The final film directed by Curtis Hanson (before his death in 2016), who could deliver with films as "L.A. Confidential" (1997) and "8 Mile" (2002) in the past, was not able to see his vision for "Chasing Mavericks" through in the season 2011/2012, so that fellow director Michael Apted needed to finish the picture in order to make the U.S. release date on October 26th 2012 for Fox 2000 Pictures (an affiliate of 20th Century Fox). The result misses a directorial signature and further gripping situations to connect with an audience. A typical story of living the American dream beyond borders and restrictions in case of character of Jay Moriarity, performed by an pale to faceless looking commoner Jonny Wetson, who gets mentored by the surfing legend Frosty Hesson, portrayed by an distressed looking Gerard Butler. Both actors can not build the chemistry to bring "Chasing Mavericks" to life. Instead the movie drips through sequences of beautifully shot point-break-waves and underwater scenes, which feel disconnected from any character evolution.The main character's purpose or better to obsession of chasing the perfect wave, the maverick, gets neglected through uninspired screen-writing by Kario Salem, who gives the Jay Moriarity the all-too-well-known treatments of being absent from school, working for his surf board, getting to know the girl of his dreams and must fight off an far from hostile looking bully gang.In between Jay meets with mentor Frosty to analyze waves, write reports on his observations and gets the occasional free meal, because his mother, performed by an recalling "Leaving Las Vegas" Elisabeth Shue, is unable to take care of her son and build a proper relationship, which towards the end of the movie fades away into oblivion.All the relationship in "Chasing Mavericks" seem underdeveloped. Character conflicts feel close to indifferent to the audience. Nevertheless there had been a chance to make the relationship between Jay & Frosty charged-enough to build some kind of suspense for Maverick-riding-final, when Frosty's wife dies under him on an occasional visit by Jay at their house. The young and the old man have no common moment to deal with Frosty's loss, which would have build a connection to the opening sequence rescue by Frosty, who pulls out death-seeking, reckless-behaving Jay out of the water of razor-sharp rocks all-around to become his substituted father.Hard to recover, who directed what in this picture, so "Chasing Mavericks" stands there as an rare example, when over-exhausted artists get to the point of giving up their profession for the sake of a peace-seeking homestead. The conclusion of "Chasing Mavericks" is unsatisfactory and underlines the fact that a director needs to be in his full state of power and balance to take a movie production on, which deals with the dream of self-fulfillment itself.© 2017 Felix Alexander Dausend (Cinemajesty Entertainments LLC)

Evan Wessman (CinematicInceptions) As you might expect, Chasing Mavericks follows the same relative storyline of classic sports movies like Rocky and Karate Kid. The individual athlete, competitor, or whatever you want to call them tries to achieve the nearly impossible and still manage the rest of their lives. The one difference from the two above movies and Mavericks is that the latter is a true story, which makes a lot of the way it's set up different because you've got to deal with the factual stuff and get the other subplots of the kid's life and whatever.The basic plot is pretty well explained in the trailer. The teenage surfer, Jay, wants to ride one of the biggest waves in existence, and he gets the local surfing legend, Frosty, to train him for it. As he's training he has to deal with problems with his friend, though I never fully understood what the tension between was caused by, and his relationship with Kim. Both of these subplots could have been incorporated better. Frosty has some domestic issues in spending more time with his kids instead of surfing obsessively, which becomes a subplot as well. The main line of action was put together pretty well, but the subplots were kind of sloppy. I guess they kind of had to add them in since it had to be true to the real kid's life, but from a strictly cinematic perspective, they probably would have done better to leave all subplots out completely even though that might make for a kind of bland story. The main issue with all the subplots is that they are underdeveloped. Frosty needing to be a better dad is touched upon like it's going to be important, but then gets left alone. Jay's mom is given probably too little screen time considering that her problems were probably pretty important in Jay's life. And the scene at the beginning where the one nameless character beats her up didn't contribute to anything and probably should have been cut or if not explained a little better. The ending was pretty solid. I'd been told beforehand that Jay dies at the end, but I wasn't told how he died, so I thought he might have died when he goes under when surfing Mavericks. The suspense of that scene was pretty good, and was probably true to the real event. His eventual death wasn't done quite as well, but neither was it done poorly.The characters are a pretty big factor, but the only ones with any true development are Jay, Frosty, Kim, Frosty's wife Brenna. Jay is written pretty well and we can see him grow throughout the movie, though the acting for his part could have been a little better. Frosty's character has the inverse problems of Jay's since he's played well by Gerald Butler, but is poorly scripted in the sense that he's basically always ticked off at Jay, or surfing, or life in general. Brenna dies about three-quarters through the movie, which I didn't think was such a great idea for the storyline unless she actually did die at that point in time. Kim gets a decent amount of screen time, but she's also written with shaky proficiency. I would say that her character should have been left out completely, but since she ended up marrying Jay I guess they couldn't do that. Her relationship with Jay progresses a lot like the one in the '02 Spiderman, where Mary Jane just suddenly realizes that Peter's the one for her after talking to him like twice, though of course here we don't have the alter ego issue.For technical execution, it did decently. The surfing scenes were pretty well done, though you can tell they probably used more than a few sequences with GoPros, and they didn't include so many of them that it would turn off non-surfing fans. Jay's training was pretty well done too, and each of the different training scenes were a good length and included at palatable intervals. The soundtrack includes a lot of alternative music, most likely from the nineties. The script and acting were C+ to B- level. None of the camera-work is spectacular at any point.I don't know if I would recommend this to surfing fans, but I will say that it isn't like Soul Surfer and doesn't try to be despite their similarities. If you're a fan of inspirational sports movies, true or not, it definitely fits that genre. It's not really my scene, but in terms of the genre, I would say it's about average, maybe a little bit below average. It's not a bad family movie, though you might have some trouble coming across a DVD copy of it. To a completely unbiased prospective viewer, I would say: consider it, but not too strongly. Overall Rating: 6.8/10.

RNMorton In this case that means I'm not sure what to say. Bits and pieces of this movie work but I can't say the same for the way it all fits together. They try to tell story of a child with absentee dad, obsessed with surfing and more specifically a menacing break in N California known as Mavericks. He is eventually mentored by gruff local surfer named Frosty. The main characters are all aptly played, Butler in particular as Frosty. Some of the surfing footage is well done and attractive. But the movie doesn't give us any insight on why the characters say or do the sometimes odd things they say or do. And it's also very episodic - this happens, then that happens, then that happens - without a bridge between the events or a sense of elapsed time. I like a surfing movie as much as the next guy or maybe more, but this was more of a tease than the real deal.