Review of Surf's Up (2007) by Kiya L — 23 May 2012

Intriguing, sort of ambitious, but not all the way good. Apparently, penguins are expert surfers, and Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf) has dreams of emulating legendary "Big Z" (Jeff Bridges) in this most prestigious of sports!! Another kiddie penguin movie, I know, but this one's actually not too bad. It's a mediocre end product, but it has a fun and weird personality along the way.

The mockumentary cliche hasn't been universally kind to TV, but I think it still has promise for movies, especially unconventional and sort of freaky animated movies like this. Even just the technical strength -- for instance, matching the nervous movement of documentary film with fake-out computer animation -- is keenly done.

I also like how it just pushes its premise straight through, without explaining anything (like, for instance, why penguins surf -- I know why they talk: it's an excuse for a lot of child-friendly Burger King cash-ins -- but surfing, whoa!). Basically, that self-confidence is a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, hilarious, easy-going, with a perfect and natural roughness; on the other hand, a stinky, hyper-angsty coming of age -- it's complicated, I guess.

As far as the story, I think it may be mostly a failure. I see a disconnect here, one that I find pretty common in animated movies actually, between precise dialogue/jokes (sharp, for the adults) and global tone/themes/plot (easy, simplistic, for the kids). It's not a Shrek-level disaster in that vein, but it suffers a bit.