“Surf’s Up” (Sony Pictures)
Surfing Penguins – Are We Surprised
After the success of marching penguins and dancing penguins should we be surprised that we now have a movie about surfing penguins I don’t think so. It seems penguins are the new cuddly creatures America wants to love. In this animated movie the penguins are cute but not necessarily loveable. You never get the feeling you could reach out and pet one of these creatures. Their beaks look sharp.
The movie centers around a young penguin that loves to surf named Cody Maverick (voiced by Shia LeBeouf). A documentary is being made of his career and it follows him from his days at home in Shiverpool, Antarctica to his surfing competition on a tropical island.
He was discovered in Shiverpool by a talent scout named Mikey (Mario Cantone) and taken to the island where Reggie Belafonte (James Woods) is staging a major surfing competition. It is all being held in honor of Big Z (Jeff Bridges) the best surfer ever, and Cody’s idol.
The penguin to beat is Tank Evans (Deidrich Bader), a good surfer but a bad sport. Also in the competition is Chicken Joe (Jon Heder) a stoner chicken surfer. Cody is good but he needs some more training before he can stand a chance of beating these two guys.
The movie slowly tells its story of good sportsmanship and being a friend first rather than a competitor. It also stresses that surfing should be fun. That is Big Z’s message and one Cody finally takes to heart.
The documentary style of the storytelling gets old fast, and the surfing competition is only so so interesting. That means that the movie needs to have a lot of humor and it doesn’t. There wasn’t much laughter going on around me from the little kids and the adult members of the audience were stone faced.
The voice talent of the characters is virtually perfect with Bridges and LeBeouf being outstanding. But even good voices need some humor to hang their hats on and that is not forthcoming. There are some inside surfer jokes and also some about sports in general but they are over the smaller kids’ heads.
The movie is rated PG for some mildly risqu humor.
“Surf’s Up” is definitely a rent the DVD type of movie. It offers nothing special to justify the cost of taking your family to the theater to watch it. Save your money and get it when it reaches DVD a few weeks from now.
I scored “Surf’s Up” a hang ten 4 out of 10.
