User reviews

This movie came up on a list of best surf movies. It is not about surfing! This movie is about a dysfunctional family going through a divorce. It's very sad. It's well written and interesting. Just be prepared that this is not an upbeat film about waves and surfers.

Having grown up in Palos Verdes (Estates, specifically) I had only a cursory interest for giving this movie a chance. Nothing new here in the insulated enclave which has become a house-flipping real estate orgy for millionaires since the 1980s. Dysfunctional families, drug addiction and suicidal teens, along with territorial surfer thugs were as prevalent here as its sun drenched environs during the Sixties and Seventies. The novel inspired the movie and seems to have been adapted well enough. Though I just couldn't wait to escape, invoking the same feeling I had as an adolescent.

The Mason family has just moved from Michigan to the exclusive community of Palos Verdes, California. There's the noted heart surgeon father (Justin Kirk), the emotionally troubled mother (Jennifer Garner) and their extremely close twin siblings (Maika Monroe and Cody Fern).

The film is narrated by Monroe's character Medina, as they all settle into their palatial home overlooking the gorgeous Pacific Ocean. However, all is not idyllic in this family, as we actually watch them deteriorate before our eyes.

The acting is solid all around but I found the story led me on a depressive and mean-spirited slog, with the parents particularly despicable here as they manipulate their teenage kids for their own purposes no matter what the cost. Without giving too much away here, the cost will be very high.

Overall, some may find this unrelenting melodrama to their liking but for me it was a difficult view and far from entertaining.

The tale of a failed marriage. dysfunctional family and drug use are what greeted me on this already depressing winters day in Australia. This could have been an Aussie movie with it's deadpan lead actress (Monroe), deadbeat Dad, OTT Mum and drug stuffed brother. Overall a bit too realistic for my taste but I like the sea and there was plenty of that!

Strong performances from the core cast save this slow-moving and moody family affair from being irredeemably trite. You've seen this film before, but maybe not this cut of it. Echoing the aesthetic tone and much of the slower interstitial pacing of the 90s thriller Point Break, this coming of age divorce melodrama shines light on the emptiness of the idealised American Dream, showing that money most certainly does not always add richness to one's life. Shadows of evolving tribal bonds flicker on the walls - family, friends, allies, enemies. Who is which? Is blood thicker than water? Is loyalty more important than happiness? Can a morality tale masquerade as a post-modern narrative? Whatever the case may be, Palos Verdes somehow keeps the action, and the answers to these questions, somewhat detached and at arm's length. Despite the decent cast, none of the characters, through all their travails, are sufficiently compelling to be celebrated or mourned.

Not great, but not bad. Worth a watch if you are hard up for something to fill 90 minutes.

Leave Palos Verdes out of this, it's a movie about the devastation on children when their parents get divorced. The parents are selfish, self centered, immature, and they should never have had children. Emotionally ill, whatever you want to call the "mother," and hugely self-involved "father." All the more reason to practice birth control and save the horror of miserable, tortuous, hideous parenting on poor unsuspecting children. That's all I want to say.

I normally don't watch movies. Actually I rarely ever watch movies. But it was on cable and I didn't feel like being bothered with the other hyped up marketed acts last night so I sat through this. And the summary of the movie was not accurate. The ratings are a joke here. First, this is one of the better screenwriting. Two, Jennifer Garner CAN act. Three, direction was excellent. This isn't a feel good movie. This movie is true to life. If not Palos Verdes, then anywhere in Southern California. Life is not a feel good movie, and unfortunately it's really this ugly for anyone who is the unwilling trapped victim of a narcissist. In this case, it's the all too common children of divorce. The reason why I don't like the summary "coming of age" is because it really isn't. How do they come of age? These kids didn't get any sort of enlightenment or accomplishment. They're the protagonists that you will empathize with. IF this movie had a hero, it would be a true blue canine family member. But these kids were not so lucky. Many people can relate to this family regardless of who and what you are- and what your circumstances are. And it's actually a good idea to watch something like this to put it in perspective. I found the drama a little intense. I wish there was more better energy and sense of humor- but unfortunately, It's true to life.

I felt a very strong revulsion for the sick, sick mother played by Jennifer Garner. There were no bright moments in this sad and pathetic scenario. Maika Monroe, as the daughter Medina, was fairly likable throughout but overall the film was depressing and aggravating. To the author of the review Monotonous: Nobody said "Leo Carrillo Beach". The reference was to Cabrillo Beach which IS roughly 15 miles from Palos Verdes.

This is a very good movie, people and characters in it are all look real. The broken marriages to so many families nowadays in almost every country of the world not only affected so many husbands and wives but also seriously messed up their children. America's social infrastructure is like a broken and shattered glass, so many broken families, so many toilet relationships, so many twisted hardship that kids have to deal with their parents' bad marriage. America has become a weird family tree, its branches and leaves so complicated, either the wives carried their kids to new marriage, or the husbands brought their kids from his first, second or even 3rd marriage to newest wives, while their newer wives or husbands also got their own kids from their former marriages. More divorces simply complicated the family tree's growth and burdened it to unknown, unpredictable and unfathomable abyss. Kids growing up from such broken families many have twisted views almost to everything that ensured them to repeat the same or similar situations of their own marriages, their relationship to their opposite gender. They would become a bad copy of their parents and usually, the 2nd or the 3rd copy will be always worse than its 1st edition.

This is a very cruel but up close and personal film that I could hardly be able to watch to the end. I pity the three young children from two different broken families. The hardships they have to deal with 24/7 are so cruel and unbearable. I felt so sad while watching it and couldn't resist thinking of my elder son's broken marriage, and the grandson jammed in between his mother and father. The hardship my son has to deal with everyday is beyond every word could be described.

This film is just too cruel to watch.....

When the situation at her idyllic Palos Verdes home turns volatile, young Medina attempts to surf her to happiness

This is much more than that. Jennifer Garner is amazing. Deep and insightful movie. To think i was just looking for a surfer movie.

I prefer Jennifer Garner as a happy upbeat actress...this role (although well acted) just didn't seem like her thing. This was a very realistic movie but extremely sad. If you want a light feel good movie...this isn't it! I know many divorced families that have kids who are basically shoved to the side to make room for the new spouse and family. The kids usually are the big losers as you can see in this film. This movie highlights the sharp contrast between the idyllic ocean setting with beautiful houses with manicured lawns and the turmoil going on under the surface. The wealthy surgeon husband is more concerned with feeding his ego with his new woman after uprooting his family to this high brow community where they just don't fit in. Jennifer Garner plays the frazzled mother and dumped wife of the surgeon who absolutely doesn't have the inner strength to keep her family together. As a result, the kids go off and do their own thing leading to disaster. It kept my attention, but I'd rather stick with something a little more upbeat.

This movie is pretty depressing. I guess that means it's pretty realistic if played true to form. Functional family becomes dysfunctional family and breaks apart. Pretty ho-hum all around; however, Jennifer Garner is excellent as a bi-polar mom dealing with her crumbling life. The rest of the cast turn in decent performances but Garner shines and proves she's a really good actress.

This movie can be watched with the sound off. you will still understand what's going on; and what's going on? i a movie that can't decide if it's about surfing teens, surf gangs, mental illness, fidelity, marriages etc because we got a slice of all that and not enough to make it whole.

I often wonder when I labor through a terrible film, who approved this? This film is plodding, incredibly pedestrian and predictable. You knew what was going to happen to one of the characters about eight minutes into the film. Unfortunately, I kept watching. I now wonder, was it morbid curiousity? Or was part of me waiting for it to get better? When did Jennifer Garner become such a raving, out of control lunatic? First this ridiculous portrayal, who knew what she was doing in this one and now the same unlikability in her character in Camping? It is not effective, it is just annoying.

If an actor is out of control and at 11 for the entire performance, where can they go? It just remains one note, not creative and definitely not watchable. There are so many problematic issues in the script and in the acting. ACTING 101, Don't play the problem, explore opposites. For God's sake, did you miss that day in class actors? Where have all the directors gone?

The biggest problem for me is that the "children", and I use that term very loosely, are too old to have the reaction that they did to their father's choices. If they had been 12 or 13, at the height of adolescense, I would have beleived the extreme reactions of the son. There was never a big enough reason for the son't reaction and spiral down, not really. They barely touched the surface and just assumed that we would "get it". I hate that. That is LAZY filmmaking/writing and acting. These "children" as coddled as they were and entitled with money, position and being spoiled rotten, were still on the edge of adulthood and in this day of expendable marriages, the divorce should have not been treated as such a travesty. It is what it is, money, entitlement and selfishness make people do things that hurt others, we get that...next. Sorry, hopefully I will help save a few hours in someone else's life, I wish I could get the hours back that I wasted watching this dreary, dull, diatribe.

One of those movies where the backstory is probably more interesting than what we get to see. Medina's father - a serial adulterer - must have promised that he would hit the "reset" button when the family moved to California from Michigan. But it turns out that there are just as many attractive, unattached women in Palos Verdes as anywhere else - and Medina's mother continues to spiral down into depression: desperately in love with a husband who constantly make her look like a fool. And so a family unravels. Not so much a story. More of a mood. There is nothing original in this narrative., We have heard it all, and seen it all, before. As many times as we see it, it is sad to watch - but the heart of the story is how each family member handles the trauma. Who's going to make it through. And who is not. Familiar ground, as I said, but beautifully acted and shot. Convincing from beginning to end - with a sharp kind of slap as these closed incestuous communities. On a personal note, a little startling to see our "Clueless" girl - Alicia Silverstone - now playing the mother of a college-age son. Where did the time go, you wonder. And you're reminded why we don't see more of her. She is not, technically speaking, an actress. It's just Alicia Silverstone as "herself". It's the only role she knows how to play.

As in real life, love can't always save a life. Even when you are twins.