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Fábio Fabuloso review
:. Director: Ricardo Bocão & Pedro Cezar
:. Genre: Documentary
:. Running Time: 1:10
:. Year: 2005
:. Country: Brasil
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Fábio Fabuloso is the nickname of Brazilian surfing sensation Fábio Gouveia who gained recognition around the world for his gracious and perfect moves on the waves. Looking at the footage and listening to testimonials from pros such as Tom Curren and Flávio Teco Padaratz, Fábio is a dancer on the waves, but the documentary also focuses on the man himself to show that he is as charismatic as a human being.
Fábio Fabuloso belongs to the post-Kid Stays in the Picture era, using inventive editing and an amused tone to tell a biographical story. While the first 20 minutes look great and provide a high dose of entertainment, the film loses its breath in the middle, becoming redundant because of a lack of things to say.
Not that I have anything against surf documentaries — I spent enough time being mistreated by Southern California waves — but how many shots of tubes do you need to see and, most importantly, how many times do you need to hear the same comments being hammered "he's the best and a great dude" to get it?
The other issue is that Fábio Fabuloso falls flat because it can't create a contrasted portrait of its central character — and maybe the fact that his sponsor pitched in for the movie might have something to do with this. Maybe he is a great guy after all, but the total absence of an edge, or even of a darker side, makes this piece looks like a fan work rather than a neutral biopic. If you're familiar with the surfing scene or if you saw the Dogtown film or documentary about the similar skate world, you might expect juicy things happening behind the scenes. But here, we're left a 100% positive portrait of a man and his world, and it gets boring pretty quickly.
Towards the end, the filmmakers manage to pique up our interest a bit again by presenting us Fábio with his family, including the surfing wife and kids as well as his official heir on the waves whom he welcomed as a relative in his house. Fábio might be fabuloso indeed, but the film wipes-out too early.
Fred Thom
 Documentary Reviews: 1998 - 2011
Documentary Reviews: 2012 - present
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