GAMADIN Word of Honor

Surf's up, dude! This wacky sci-fi thriller whizzes by at a breakneck two hours with plenty of guitar riffs and screeching gears. Ian Alan Carlsen is effective as teen surfer Harlowe Pylott, whose laid-back West Coast drawl is punctuated by surfer slang. Harlowe and his friends become unlikely heroes when they save righteous babe Leucadia Mars, whose mother turns out to be not from planet Earth. Together they set out to retrieve MILLAWANDA, an ancient spaceship that once belonged to a peaceful race called the Gamadin. The adventure is marred by volume issues in a few dramatic sequences where the sound effects drown out the dialogue, making it hard to follow the plot, but this still succeeds as bodacious summer escapism. E.E. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2014]