Instant Favorite.

Boring, long, and too preachy.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The back story on this excellent series resides in three novels of California writer, Kem Nunn. So stretch your mind and read Tijuana Straits, Tapping the Source, and Dogs of Winter. You got plenty of time and the effort will be rewarding. Nunn's initial mystical twist on surfing cuts across the plot line and blasts out the barrel of the series finale like s surfer in a curling wave. Way too much fun with Christian liturgy and satirical leverage on the New Testament likely cut the series short. The series begins where Deadwood left off and bumps against the final boundary of the nation's frontier. The sport of surfacing provides a swell metaphor for the interface of religion and nature. Such a shame that HBO didn't have the balls to run another season. The fun had hardly begun.

I just saw the series on DVDs (Aug. 2008) and it was one of the best I have seen. It is quirky, oddball and original with an excellent cast--the story and writing are great and really original. I think it helps to be open minded to accept something so different. It certainly was as good as or better than X-Files, which I loved. Only the acting in JFC is sublime. I am s complete sucker for great acting and TV has always been a great venue for it, harking back to the 1950s when TV drama was live and there was more of it. TV was where James Dean and John Cassavetes got their big breaks, just to name two brilliant actors. Some of the best current TV is on Canadian TV: Intelligence and DaVinci's Inquest and, before them, Nowhere Man with Bruce Greenwood, all of which are available on DVD.Unlike reviewers who found that JFC made them think, I had a completely visceral and emotional reaction to John from Cincinnati. I believe you have to accept it for what it is and revel in the sheer enjoyment of the series, especially the cast and their great acting.And the surfing scenes don't hurt.

After watching the first few episodes of this show, I was stoked...was the most excited I'd been about a show in years. Interesting characters...intriguingly vague plot developments that seemed to elude to something huge...but then a switch flipped. Coherence became taboo. Look...I understand that some people like a challenge...a big challenge even. Checkers isn't you're game. You prefer chess. This is the equivalent of playing chess blindfolded with pieces missing...and you get a smack across the face every time you make a move. Frustrating and pointless. Thank God the show ended...as I would have inevitably continued watching in an attempt to find that initial excitement again. To the self proclaimed intellectuals that got off on this thankfully brief failure of a series...fear not. Go to your local museum or art gallery...find a nice lil abstract painting...and find the plot in that. FYI...the blue splotch represents your struggle to prove that less is more.

Now that the show is canceled by the time of this writing, I have to say i'm neither sad nor glad at the decision. The show was pretty deep and bizarre, especially when the title character John was there.John (Austin Nichols) himself was probably the best character in the entire show. He was child-like in nature, but there was so much more about him that was intriguing to keep watching the show. His ability to learn by repeating sentences (and relentlessly repeats them), pull things out of his pockets, and heal were probably a few of the possibly many things the writers originally planned to do with him. We will never know now.Greyson Fletcher as Shaun Yost is probably one of the worst casting decisions ever made. This kid can skate and (possibly) surf very well, but he sure can't act. Pro surfers like Keala Kennelly actually can act pretty well despite their actual profession, so this is simply inexcusable. As I read somewhere, this is reminiscent to George Lucas casting Jake Llyod as Anakin Skywalker in Episode I: it should have gone to a more capable actor and they should've been the stunt doubles instead.The entire Yost family was interesting to say the least, they lacked a certain something that could've made their characters more engaging. I can't say the same for everyone else, especially Ed O'Neill and Luis Guzman who were very uninteresting and hollow in their performances (sad cause they are good actors). If the show had more compelling characters (and a few actors) along with the dialogue actually going somewhere instead of being overly dull and cryptic, this would've been a great show without a doubt. It has its moments (episode 2 and 3 were great especially of what the show should've done, as well as the John and Cass relationship), but ultimately it left me wanting more of "human" moments and less of the nonsensical ones.