Critic Reviews

• Trevor Johnston, Time Out

  Although the action footage is impressive, it becomes repetitive, exposing the rest of the movie as something of a ragbag. Surfing fans may be more enthused.

• Tim Robey, Daily Telegraph

  Slightly waffly paean to Irish surfing, rescued by the always awesome sight of waves as high as the screen, and consummately skilled, tanned blokes turning them into a canvas.

• Cosmo Landesman, Sunday Times (UK)

  Strictly for wave fans.

• Kezia Clark, Little White Lies

  It's an entertaining and thought-provoking take on a sport, and a lifestyle, whose identity and history is increasingly under threat from commercial interests.

• , Empire Magazine

  Initially, Waveriders looks like surf porn, but quickly reveals itself to be the story of the sport's unlikely genesis.

• Richard Luck, Film4

  The first essential surf movie since Riding Giants.

• James Christopher, Times [UK]

  The sensational footage of surfers barrelling through 50ft waves provides most of the appeal. But Joel Conroy's documentary is full of scrapbook curios.

• Peter Bradshaw, Guardian [UK]

  Some awe-inspiring big-wave action.

• Tim Evans, Sky Movies

  It's a tall tale that suggests the teller has swallowed the Blarney Stone whole.

• Jonathan Crocker, Total Film

  The footage of the tiny figures riding these ferocious 50ft monsters goes past awe-inspiring into something almost indefinable.

• David Edwards, Daily Mirror [UK]

  Riding Giants covered much of the same ground in 2004 - and did it better.

• , Sun Online

  A few spectacular waves and a bit of interesting history is not enough to sustain a feature-length film. So it is probably just surf fans who will think Waveriders is swell.

• Anthony Quinn, Independent

  However much you admire the daring of these young surfers, you soon realise that listening to them yarn on about the sport can become very, very boring.

• Allan Hunter, Daily Express

  a winning combination of personal testimony, history lesson and heart-thumping action footage that chronicles Ireland's contribution to the development of surfing. An impressive insight into a little-known world.

• Matthew Turner, ViewLondon

  Watchable surfing documentary with some genuinely stunning footage, but you never really get to know the surfers themselves and the film doesn't do anything that Riding Giants didn't do twenty times better.

• Victor Olliver, Teletext

  Earnest types speak in awe of wave sizes, yet no one once thinks to mount a camera on a surfer for a vicarious thrill. A lost opportunity.

Read all 16 critic reviews