So it’s finally summertime in earnest, at least in the northern hemisphere. The days are long–not to mention hot–and most people start thinking about ways to stay cool. A good long swim is at the top of many lists, and with good reason. But as the folks out at Image Entertainment, who sent us out a copy of Highwater to review, would no doubt like to point out, there’s a lot more than swimming to be done out there.

Highwater follows some of the greatest names in surfing–Kelly Slater, Andy Irons, and plenty more–as they go forth to take on the breakers on Oahu’s legendary North Shore. Some of the waves are the size of multi-story buildings, and so, this is one for the best and bravest only.

It’s something like a documentary, with a bit of drama thrown in for flavor. But the one flavor that will be absolutely unavoidable is the sharp stink of pretentiousness. When you’ve got lines like “Maybe they (the waves) still represented a meaningful meaninglessness, a place where reality was beyond debate and truth was more than having the best spin.”, you know somebody thinks very, very highly of his own work, and any devil that disagrees may take the hindmost.

Of course, the critic out there may say “Any time you bust out a line like ‘meaningful meaninglessness’, it’s time to pack it in because if your film were any more pretentious it would stick up its nose at the audience, and it doesn’t even have a nose to stick up. It would create one. It would grow one just so it could look down it.” And we’d probably be right, but don’t tell the poor schmuck who directed this high-toned metaphysical mush pile.

But credit where credit is due: there are some truly spectacular visuals here. Amazing shots of wind and wave and sun and sand alike, truly beautiful looks at an island paradise to which many are called, but few are chosen.

There’s some interesting history, some unusual facts thrown in, strange bits of information that make this really interesting in spots too, like the story of Bethany Hamilton, who lost an arm to a shark attack and got a movie made out of it, called Soul Surfer.

You’ll get quite a bit out of it, though some of it will be less palatable than others. The visuals are amazing, the dialogue sheer crap. And when you get a blend like this, you know what has to come next.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives a mix of excellence and garbage like Highwater a five out of ten–when it’s beautiful in one sense and horrible in another, there’s only one thing you can do: call it good enough.