This film is quite inspiring, as the title suggests. It features mostly young people doing outdoor sports. These sports are very similar in that they all require balance, shifting of weight, and are singular person activities.
Featured sports are surfboarding, skateboarding, downhill skiing, hang gliding and body surfing. The other review on here mentions race car driving, which is actually not featured.
The surfboarding shots are amazingly well done. The water looks so fresh and clean and the tube shots are very awe inspiring. The male and female surfers are all very good at what they do. However, the female ones don't seem to care that their bikini bottoms show a lot of crack! Why care about your butt when you're surfing? I wouldn't either!
The skateboarding segments are pretty cool because they feature kids in California who would skate in in-ground, waterless pools, drainage ditches or really anywhere that was paved. Not like today, where skateboarders are prohibited everywhere you look. There were segments where the skaters would do obstacle courses, skate down giant paved hills or double (?) skateboard (two skateboards, two people, sitting down and holding onto each other) down the parking garage starting from the top. Many kids skated barefoot!
The fashions of skaters back then were a whole lot different than they are now. Shirtless, ripped jeans or cutoffs, barefoot, long bleach blond stringy hair and the tannest of white person skin you will ever see are what the majority of these early teenage skate punks looked like. An occasional afro on the non-whites, but always fearless looking.
There is very little talking in this film. Instead, most of it is vibrantly colorful and well-framed shots of these sports accompanied by great motivating and original music. Surf style music, psychedelic guitars, and inspiring rock ballads add excitement to the scenes. One surfer is interviewed throughout and he doesn't talk very much.
If you look closely during the ending skateboarding competition, if I'm not mistaken, you can see Peter Fonda standing in the crowd of onlookers with a huge smile on his face. They close up on him, and I'm 99% sure it is Peter Fonda in sunglasses, though it's not mentioned in the credits.
There is even a koala in Australia watching a surfing competition! It seems to be really into the whole thing while it sits on a beach blanket and then climbs a beach umbrella.
I recommend this film to anyone who even remotely likes any of these sports. It will make you get up off your behind, grab your board and GO FOR IT!
