Surf's Up.

Review #1691: Surf's Up.

Cast: 

Shia LaBeouf (Cody Maverick), Jeff Bridges (Zeke "Big Z/Geek" Topanga), Zooey Deschanel (Lani Aliikai), Jon Heder (Chicken Joe), Mario Cantone (Mikey Abromowitz), James Woods (Reggie Belafonte), Diedrich Bader (Tank "The Shredder" Evans), Dana Belben (Edna Maverick), Brian Posehn (Glen Maverick), with Kelly Slater and Rob Machado (themselves) Directed by Ash Brannon and Chris Buck (#579 - Frozen)

Review: 

Truthfully, I don't know anything about surfing. I have spent more combined time at a water park than at the beach, and I say this as someone who barely travels to begin with, but I imagine that there is quite the interesting time one could have spending a summer with waves and time to ride (If I had viewed something like The Endless Summer (1966), the originator of the travelling surf craze, I probably would have said the exact same thing). Naturally, we have a surf movie involving penguins. Welp, there were quite a few penguin-themed movies to come out in such a short span with each other, whether as a nature-documentary in March of the Penguins (2005) or with Happy Feet (2006, which started development after this one had started). The last one is interesting to note, because that film and this one include motion capture within its animation; Surf's Up has a look of a hand-held documentary because of motion capture that was done of the movement of a camera operator, and it is probably interesting to note that the voices of the "film crew" chronicling said adventures are of the two directors in Ash Brannon and Chris Buck. Each had studied in character animation at California Institute of the Arts (Buck, eleven years older, was first), and both eventually did teaching there (Brannon was Buck's student for a time). Buck worked for Disney in the animation department on a few films (ranging from animator to character design to supervisor) before he directed his first film with Tarzan (1999). Brannon did work for both Disney and Pixar, which included serving as a co-director with Toy Story 2 (1999). At any rate, this is the second feature to come from Sony Pictures Animation, which had announced this film as being in development when the studio was established in 2002.

The screenplay was written by Don Rhymer, Ash Brannon, Chris Buck, and Chris Jenkins, while the story was written by Jenkins and Christian Darren. Look at it this way: at least the cast was recorded together, so this isn't just a brand movie with talking animals that reeks of complete corporate product. The film wasn't quite a great success with audiences, but one can only imagine how when you make a film for $100 million, although a direct-to-video sequel would be made with Surf's Up 2: WaveMania (guess what that is about) a decade later. The attempts at a laidback atmosphere within a "camera crew" really can't sustain itself fully for an 85 minute movie, but it proves to be an okay movie when it comes to casual amusement in doing the fundamentals in engaging the audience without ringing their heads with anything obnoxious or any blatant clichés. In other words, it may be by-the-numbers, but it does these things just fine for a movie with surfing penguins (if you can watch one where they sing, surfing isn't too off). LaBeouf proves worthy in making a readily generic lead story come around with a little bit of charm, talking to the audience with enough reach that we don't keep our eyes on something else (namely some nice looking waves) for too long. Truthfully, the most casually interesting presence is probably Bridges, abiding with calm composition that only comes from an offbeat mentor. Deschanel comes and goes in attempts at zippy charm to act with LaBeouf, which doesn't really go very far, really. Heder, apparently picked when the producers saw him in Napoleon Dynamite (I'll take a rain check on that), strolls along with a hint of amusement when it comes to trying to be more casual than the film, which I guess proves okay for brief moments. Woods gets to have his best impression of "speaking to the manager" for moments that I chuckle at pretty well. Bader gets to channel some insecure bravado for a few interesting moments to chuckle at, which I find just fine to cap a movie with some resemblance of enjoyment when it comes to learning "lessons" about enjoying the wave and the folks around oneself. Yes, it's a movie about surfing and penguins, and it is exactly as average as you could expect, which means that at least it didn't have a chance to be a complete grab in cynicism, which I guess means that this could prove a decent time for a night in the summer.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.