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'SurfWise'

Rating: (3 1/2 STARS)

May 9, 2008

Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, Stanford-educated physician and the man said to have introduced surfing to Tel Aviv, decided in the mid-'50s to adopt a '60s lifestyle: He and his wife, Juliette, would raise their children - eight boys, one girl - in a tiny camper, traveling the beaches of Southern California, surfing every day, home-schooling the kids and adhering to regimen of healthy food, exercise and devout Judaism.

What sounds like a idyllic existence is shown to be something quite else in director Doug Pray's first-rate documentary on the family, its inner turmoils, the sometimes megalomaniacal behavior of its patriarch and the lasting legacy of his philosophies. Not a "surfing movie," by any stretch, "Surfwise" is about how one man tried to avoid the standard-issue dysfunction of American family life and discovered a hybrid variety all his own.

SURFWISE (unrated). 1:43 (adult content, vulgarity). At the IFC Center, Manhattan. - JOHN ANDERSON