Overall it was a fun and somewhat informative flick with necessarily dated material (being a documentary "this is your life" kind of film) that was still new enough to me to get the occasional break out of chicken skin. If you're a fan of Occy or McCoy or you've already seen the Billabong Challenge films, Sik Joy, or Green Iguana and are looking for more, get this one.

I haven't seen any of the other recent retrospectives like "Searching for Tommy Curren," but this film did a good job of gathering together interviews from the surfing community, particularly Occy's family, Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew, and Tom Carroll. Most of the early footage wasn't shot by McCoy and it's pretty grainy stuff, but the footage from mid-80's Pipe was downright harrowing. It's fun to watch Occy's surfing progress rapidly from a little kid slashing madly on a short, piggy tri-fin in the shorebreak to going one-on-one at Huntington with Tom Curren, and winning. Much is made of Occy's appearance in a contest at Jeffries Bay, but the footage is grainy and stuttering and doesn't do it justice.

The Green Iguana sequence from the opening of Occy's surf-video traveller career is one of the real highlights, with perfect overhead Indian Ocean lefts. I've seen Green Iguana countless times but couldn't quite place the shots presented (despite the fact that Occy and McCoy make specific reference to the video in the opening montage).

Probably the weakest point in the film rolls around when it touches on Occy's withdrawal from the tour and surfing entirely, or "the time he was on the couch." The whole movie has McCoy's characteristic fun and light-hearted touch, but here it handles what Occy went through with kid gloves. I'd have gotten a much better appreciation for the magnitude of his comeback if I'd learned more about why he left.

The comeback has good but already-seen-it footage from the Sik Joy (cleverly masked with some weird coloring) and the Challenge videos. This is where his surfing really shines and he lays down some startling tracks on his cutbacks. But where's the shots from his advance all the way to the finals at Pipe in 1996, the year Occy took out Sunny Garcia and opened the door for Kelly Slater beat Rob Machado to win it all?

New in this film are shots of the 'skins' tournament Occy won at sizeable Bells and his follow-up there a year later in '98 with a win at the WCT contest. It finishes out nicely as Occy joins Luke Egan for a short session in lefts at Kirra followed by a hodgepodge of stoked grommets and old timers at Cronulla engaging in talk about the Occ.

Again, it's worth a look if you want to know more about Occy or are a fan. It's got the characteristic cornball humor that Jack McCoy brings to any project, including the running bits with Occy and Margo making some kind of Italian high art film. However, it lacks that feeling that Jack McCoy's best work has, in which he stirs some primordial urge to go surf with just a few beautiful shots of perfect overhead waves. Look to Billabong Challenge 1 or Sik Joy for that.