Review of Soul Surfer (2011) by The D — 07 Jun 2013

(2/10).

Soul Surfer is a tediously manipulative film centering on a girl surfer who lost her arm to a shark in a surfing accident. This is a very compelling true story and I think it's also a story that needed to be told, but this was clearly not the movie to do it. Instead of letting the real drama of the story drive the narrative, the movie masks itself with phony melodrama and emotional manipulation combined with pure cheese.

This is honestly one of the cheesiest movies I have ever seen, perhaps THE cheesiest. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a cheesier movie (perhaps Men of Honor?). The melodrama and terrible dialogue had me rolling my eyes so often I thought my eyes were going to fall out. The people who will eat this movie up are Christians, but they defend every Christian movie, no matter how terrible it is. I am an atheist myself, but that doesn't mean I am biased against Christian movies like I have been accused of being many times by people I know. Whenever I talk about Christian film, I always bring up the fact that 90% of them are pure garbage. Then people tell me: "You obviously don't like Christian movies because you're an atheist". This statement is not true however because I enjoy any type of movie if it's done right. For example: WARRIOR is a Christian movie that I think is incredible and it made my #3 spot on my best movies of the year list for 2011. Christians defend their films like their lives depend on it. Especially with Soul Surfer, which is considered by many to be the best Christian film in years. I think this film is pure crap that I couldn't take seriously because the dialogue, the script and the acting were all so terrible.

This movie had the potential to be a very emotionally powerful movie because this is a true story and it's a very compelling true story, but many of the scenes that are supposed to be "powerful" just come across as preachy and heavy-handed. Sometimes even laughable. The main scene that could have been really well done was the Shark Attack scene, but it had me dying with laughter because it was so poorly done on every level. Also, her arm in the film was replaced with a CGI stub that looks terrible. The CGI stub thing sometimes changed shape on camera because the effects were so bad.

Overall, this film had a lot of potential and a compelling true story behind it, but it failed on every level to bring that story to life in a convincing way. The film and story feel very Hollywoodized and it is possibly the cheesiest movie I have ever seen. Because the movie had a lot of potential and the story is genuinely compelling, I will give it 2 points for that. I give this film a (2/10).