New York Times
"...Mr. Brown has the magic ability to take his public on a two-hour vacation. It's the next best thing to being there..." 08/08/2003 p.E10Los Angeles Times
"...Brown has expertly captured the exhilarating and terrifying experience of watching surfers attack waves so preposterously large and ridiculously beautiful they defy description..." 08/08/2003 p.C6 Entertainment Weekly
"...STEP INTO LIQUID is a great title for a surfing documentary, and the movie, written, edited, and directed by Dana Brown, lives up to that trippy sensual promise..." 08/15/2003 p.53 Rolling Stone
"...Dana Brown's STEP INTO LIQUID is the best surfing documentary ever made..." 09/04/2003 p.150 Box Office
"...It's funny and pithy and the figures profiled are all so dedicated to the life one can't help but get into it..." 09/01/2003 p.119 USA Today
"[T]his surprisingly talky beach-hopper climaxes with the thrilling finessing of a 66-footer." 04/30/2004 p.3E San Francisco Chronicle 8 of 10
A bubble wash for the senses, an adrenaline rush for the mind, "Step Into Liquid" will have even the most landlocked goofy-footers wondering why they never learned to surf...It certainly looks appealing here. Big, curling waves, jolly attractive folks, and if things get too scary, you just kick it down into slow motion. Men, women and kids do it, and all over the world, too, from Ireland to Vietnam. This is a valentine to surfing from Dana Brown, son of the cupid of the sport, Bruce Brown, whose "Endless Summer" and "Endless Summer II" were the gold standard for surf flicks...What can Brown the Younger add? For starters, surf-ology has changed. "Tow- in" surfing means that riders (and cameramen) can get out to the monster waves way off shore by hitching a ride on a Jet Ski. It isn't just bigger waves, it is better footage of bigger waves and sound that will rattle your esophagus...To watch these gorgeous people skim across those magnificent waves, you'd think that surfing was a kind of cheerful, watery commune where everyone loves the ocean and gets along. As we know well here, "wave rage" is actually a serious and persistent problem...Having said that, anyone who goes to "Liquid" for social commentary is in the wrong movie. This is not only escapist fare, it is also heart-pounding, stunning stuff. There is simply no sport that is anything like surfing. - C.W. Nevius
Reel.com 9 of 10
Surely the first real documentary about surfing had to be 1966's The Endless Summer. Coming along in the mid 60s, it was smack in the middle of that decade's sunny youth culture wave (marked by surfing, cars, and beach girls and boys). The social unrest of the '60 and early '70s was still a year or two off, and director Bruce Brown combined stunning footage of surfing action with a tongue in cheek documentary style for a movie that captured its period perfectly...Nearly 40 years later, son Dana has taken the ball (or board) and run with it. Step Into Liquid is full of some of the most breathtaking, stupendously gorgeous cinematography imaginable; if ever a movie would have been perfectly suited to the IMAX format, this would be it. It's regrettable that it wasn't, but even so the sumptuous camera work is almost overwhelming...It's hard for a sports documentary to hold up for an entire feature length movie, and granted, there are times when Step Into Liquid drags a bit or could have benefited from some judicious editing. Still, the movie's images are so seductive and intoxicating, they'd have the most landlocked Midwesterners hankering for some sand between their toes and a briny spray in the air. It goes a long, long way towards explaining the allure of surfing, and why it's been drawing people back to the waves for 2000 years now. - Jerry Renshaw
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