When it comes to surfing DVD’s, among my favorites are the “DRIVE THRU” series from 14 Day Productions. It’s literally a series which puts together a group of well-known surfers and send them to surf spots in different parts of the world.
Some of these surfers know each other really well and some who don’t know each other all that well but that’s part of the fun of watching these people together and see how they have fun, if they can put up with each other and overall enjoy the country, experience the culture and surf in cool locations.
“DRIVE THRU: South Central America” was a fun “DRIVE THRU” because these guys had fun, got drunk, pulled pranks on each other but it’s just how the crew covered the 14-days of traveling, surfing and just following the guys having fun. But the enjoyability also comes from the tight editing by Matt Beauschesne. From the beautiful scenery of South Central America (Panama, Chile and Brazil), the clips of the guys surfing and how you get these flashes of images and editing that is in tune with the music. Pretty cool!
Speaking of the music, quite a good number of awesome music featured featured on this DVD from Blink 182’s “Easy Target”, Chemical Romance with “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You”, Muse’s “Hysteria”, Modest Mouse’s “Float On”, Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” and many others.
For DRIVE THRU South Central America, the surfing footage is very awesome but the feature also has a few cool non-surfing footage. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:
- Watching the guys goof off at the airport
- Kalani getting drunk and getting hit by a bat and falling into the sea.
- Some kid taunting Benji Weatherly
- Donavon playing guitar and Ozzie singing “La Bamba”
- The guys hang gliding in Brazil
- The guys riding their ATV’s on the beach and then doing some tow surfing
The feature is about 48 minutes long.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
There are a good number of extras such as an alternate ending (which I preferred), three deleted scenes (which were around 5-minutes) featuring the guys looking at a sloth climbing a tree, more of the bats and more surfing footage when the guys went out with the ATV’s.
Also, included are outtakes with the guys ribbing on each other and messing around and messing up on camera. For “Inside Out”, the guys talk about being selected for this DRIVE THRU and discussing their favorite experiences of the trip. Then there is a 2-minute “Surf” footage featuring everyone surfing.
There are quite a good number of “DRIVE THRU” releases on DVD but it’s always cool to see the various surf spots in different countries and again, these DRIVE THRU features are quite fun because you get a good balance of surfing footage but sometimes you really don’t know anything about the surfers but what you see on TV, what you read on magazines but with this series, you get to see these surfers and watch them have fun!
It’s like hearing a story from a buddy about his surf trip in some country but instead of having to hear it, you can watch it. You get that visual experience which made it fun. Also, with awesome editing, DVD presentation, beautiful locations and awesome music, and again…just watching these guys just ribbing on each other, cracking jokes and having fun, everything was all good!
Last, I like the fact that this surf DVD doesn’t skimp on special features, there’s a good number of them and they are quite lengthy too.
Overall, these DRIVE THRU DVD’s are just enjoyable. Definitely check it out!
