Call me a gay philistine, but this movie has one of the most gorgeous group of young guys in any movie I've seen, and they spend most of the time bare-chested and often nude. But the film, in an effort, I guess, to get a PG rating, plays a ridiculous game of peek-a-boo with full frontal shots. If the film maker had just been casual about it, as films of the 21st century have been for a while, he might have added a bit of integrity and realism that the film could use. And probably made it even more commercially successful. Marketing people have obviously decided to downplay this aspect of the movie: the near constant focus on the guys' physical beauty, their faces, their bodies (especially their asses) and their surfing ability. And nowhere on the website or trailer is there any mention of the one really original aspect of the film: the integration of a gay teen in a group of straight guys: the way he's taunted, but accepted, and the way he finds his way to his first experience of reciprocated sexual affection.
Maybe the filmmaker will release a gay director's cut and test my thesis.
