Few sports look backward. No one would begin to imagine, for instance, the NFL returning to leather helmets for posterity sake. Surfing is different.
In recent years there’s been a resurgence in surf of all things retro: from traditional longboarding to fishes to bonzers and everything in between. Not to say that’s a bad thing. Revisiting surfing’s roots can lead us to collectively dust off old ideas, and in some cases modernize them to create entirely new ones. The tension between the progression-oriented and the surfing-as-cosmic-flow, though, is ripe for satire – something the dudes from Two Eyes Film have executed expertly with their newest flick “The Outrider.”
If you recall, Two Eyes Film has also skewered surfboard shaping, surfing in the cold, and #vanlife. In its finest form, satire has the power to hold the mirror up so we can laugh at ourselves. And “The Outrider” absolutely succeeds.
