Review of Surf's Up (2007) by Aaron W — 20 Jun 2012

Surfs up is a mockumentary styled animated film following a young penguin surfer named Cody Maverick (Shia Labeouf) who is found by a talent searching group led by a otter named Reggie Belafonte (James Woods.) He meets a chicken named joe (John Heder) and a rival surfer named the Tank (Diedrich Bader) and is going to face off against him in a surfing competition. While training he gets hurt and runs into another penguin named Geek (Jeff Bridges) who turns out to be a legendary surfer everyone had thought to be dead. He decides to train with Geek to go up against Tank and beat him.

This is a strange case of film to go with this style for an animated film but it strangely works. Mainly the comedy is the thing that works. The film has this strangely realistic tone to it much like a mockumentary such as "This is Spinal Tap"' and this film could've actually worked as a live action film because of how there is almost no instances where them being birds applies to the plot. If you changed the antarctic to somewhere in the U.S. or something the film could've actually been a live action film, but this isn't saying the film doesn't work. This is a very interesting premise for an animated film and I can really respect this interesting idea.

As I said before the comedy in this film is what really shines and is the main selling point of the film next to the surprisingly good and realistic surfing scenes. The timing in some of these jokes and the laid back tone just makes the jokes all the more funnier the further the film goes. Now I'm not all a huge fan of dry or improv humor in film such as in Napoleon Dynamite, but this is one of those rare instances where this is just flat out hilarious and it really does work well with the characters and these actors all being very good at improv and dry humor. The interactions that happen with the cameraman are also very funny, mainly when the small little pingu tribe tries to attack Chicken Joe and instead shoot the cameraman instead, and each time it just makes me almost die of laughter.

Another one of the main things that really makes this movie shine is the incredible surfing scenes in the film. Taking references from expert surfers, this films animators really knew what they were doing when examining these surfers and capturing this in the film. The wipeouts look good and it is all animated incredibly well. The main climax surfing competition is of course one of the biggest highlights of the film and it is the best scene and the most adrenaline pumping scene in the film as well. The way the scenes are shot work so well and the water coming at the camera during the scene also help make this seem much more realistic.

Overall the film has good animation, the humor is great, and the surfining scenes are surprisingly very good for an animated film. If you like mockumentaries or dry humor films you may really enjoy this film.