MOVIE REVIEW: 'Surf's Up'


From today's Oregonian ....




It's entirely possible there are now more movies about penguins than actual penguins. But "Surf's Up" at least tries to find a new way to tell a story about Hollywood's favorite endangered waterfowl.

You see, unlike "March of the Penguins," "Happy Feet," "Madagascar" and like 23 other movies I'm forgetting, "Surf's Up" takes the form of a fake documentary. (Well, so did Bob Saget's "Farce of the Penguins," but that went straight to video.)

Specifically, "Surf's Up" is a mockumentary about Cody Maverick (voiced by Shia LaBeouf) -- an Antarctic penguin who hitches a ride to the "Big Z Memorial Surf-Off" to test his wave-riding skills against the world's best surfing birds.

From there, the movie treads the predictable path of the '80s sports comedy: There's the bully champion (Diedrich Bader) with an unnatural lust for trophies. There's a wacky sidekick (Jon Heder) and a tomboy love interest (Zooey Deschanel). And (of course) Cody meets a mysterious mentor (Jeff Bridges, doing his best Lebowski) who teaches our callow young hero that winning is less important than fun, Zen and the perfect tube.

It's a nice message, even if the sports story is more than a little by-the-numbers and the movie could stand to land a few more jokes. The script is … adequate, lacking any of "Happy Feet"'s loopy change-the-world ambitions.

But what makes "Surf's Up" stand out is its look and texture. Co-directors Ash Brannon and Chris Buck frame their computer-animated kid's flick like it’s a low-budget surfing doc -- complete with candid interviews, handheld camera work, archive footage, varying film stocks, time-lapse photography and lens-cracking mishaps. (Imagine a whole movie that plays like the pre-credits interviews in "The Incredibles," and you're starting to get the idea.)

It's a neat trick that was probably harder to pull off than it looks. Combine this with strong, naturalistic voice work by Bridges and LaBeouf, and "Surf's Up" ends up feeling a lot less stale than it has any right to feel, given the genre and bird species.
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B; 85 minutes; rated PG for mild language and some rude humor; multiple locations.

'Surf's Up' (The Oregonian, June 8, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - June 8, 2007 at 08:28 AM        

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