Review: Surf’s Up

PLOT:

This is
the true story of Code Maverick, an underdog penguin who’s eager to
prove himself by taking first place at the “Penguin World
Surfing Championship”.

REVIEW:

I have
to admit, when I first heard the premise of SURF’S UP (surfing
penguins? really?), the stupidity of it almost gave me a migraine.
But I guess if

Hollywood

can get away with tap dancing penguins (*cough* HAPPY FEET *cough*),
they can get away with anything.

Unlike
HAPPY FEET though, at least the filmmakers behind SURF’S UP seem to
be perfectly aware of how ridiculous their storyline is. During the
opening sequence, there’s a montage of historical artwork and
archival footage that demonstrates the evolution of “penguin
surfing” throughout time. It’s a scene that will probably leave
children blank-faced, but will have adults in stitches.

The
movie continues forward with the documentary angle, seemingly poking
brief fun at MARCH OF THE PENGUINS, and then ultimately moving
forward into more MTV territory, riffing on rock music-filled
surfing documentaries. To say the film’s a mockumentary would be
accurate, but a better description would be calling it a feature
length version of the faux bloopers as seen in many of the Pixar
films. In terms of laughs, it meets up to that standard as well.
When the actual storyline kicks in, however, that’s when the
problems start.

The
documentary gimmick makes the first half of the movie fun and
interesting, but it’s not exactly compelling enough in the way a
family film should be. Because of this, the movie eventually
downplays the documentary angle to make way for the story.
Unfortunately, the plot is exactly as generic and bland as every
other underdog tale that

Hollywood

keeps crapping out. You’ve got your stock love interest (voiced by
Zooey Deschanel), your stock villain (voiced by Diedrich Bader, who
admittedly gets a couple of hilarious moments), your stock dopey
sidekick (voiced by Jon Heder), and your stock mentor (voiced by
Jeff Bridged) who needs to teach our stock protagonist (voiced by
Shia LaBeouf) a thing or two about stock Hollywood messages. (Yeah,
stock. Rhymes with cock. Remember that; it’s what this movie’s story
sucks.)

Regardless
of this, kids should still have a blast with the many goofy
characters being tossed onto the screen (there’s a tiny twittering
bird voiced by Mario Cantone, an in-your-face show announcer voiced
by James Woods, a bunch of funny children penguins, etc.). The only
disappointment in the character department concerns Chicken Joe. In
a movie where every character is comical, you’d think the actual
designated comic relief would be a lot funnier. Instead, he feels
more like filler – just an instigator of a bunch of random silly
gags used to stretch out the running time (none of which are
particularly funny, or even unfunny for that matter).

Meanwhile,
the standout character is the one that should’ve been the least
interesting – Shia’s large laidback mentor. But thanks to perfect
voice acting by Jeff Bridges (in Dude-mode), he ends up being the
only one with any real heart. And truth be told, that’s something
noticeable lacking in the rest of the film.

The
filmmakers were apparently too busy creating a lush tropical
paradise and beautiful CGI waves to bother with giving their film a
soul. Who needs a soul though, when you have animation that looks
this good? You probably can’t tell from the trailer, but the CGI
here is outstanding. Certain aspects are much more cartoony than,
say, the photo realistic approach to HAPPY FEET, but it still looks
amazing in its own right. Then again, having amazing visuals in a
computer generated film seems almost like a given by this point.
It’s actually more rare to have a CGI film that looks bad.

At
least the film’s got the humor down pat as well, with everything
being consistently funny and oftentimes hilarious. When the movie
isn’t busy giving adults something clever/cute/fun to enjoy, it
makes sure to keep the kids laughing with your standard array of
fart and feces humor (at one point even involving an entire pool of
glow-worm poo). Those gags had me rolling my eyes, but I was
grateful that the filmmakers didn’t rely on mindless pop culture
references. I think we’ve seen enough of that from the SHREK films.

The
overall experience of SURF’S UP may not be one of complete
satisfaction (due to the unbearably clichéd story), but thanks to
its numerous hilarious moments and fun documentary gimmick, it still
manages to beat out a lot of the other non-Pixar CGI films. That’s
perfectly good enough for me.

6
out of 10
— by Quigles