7th's Summer Movie Round Up 2007 Part 2: Surf's Up
Posted by 7th on June 21, 2007

A quick pre-review warning: this article is going to wander off on a number of tangents, but I promise it gets there in the end.

Last year, the biggest CGI money maker (and rightfully so) was Pixar's Cars, a flawed but still highly enjoyable film that many reviews proclaimed to be the closest thing to a dud that Pixar's ever released. This is not the case (I presonally feel A Bug's Life is their least re-watchable film, but that's an article for another day) But one thing the reviewers did harp on correctly (and repeatedly, as though each was the first to pick up on it) was that Cars ripped off a good 60-70% of its plot from an early 90's Michael J. Fox film called Doc Hollywood. Michael J. Fox plays a doctor (Lighting McQueen) who is on his way to California to become a big shot plastic surgeon. On his way, he has a car-based mishap while going through a small town (Radiator Springs) and is sentenced by the Judge (The Doc) to stay for a week acting as town doctor to work off his sentence. While there, he learns the judge used to be a fantastic doctor in his own right (Hudson Hornet), falls in love with the local attorney (Sally) and befriends the local towtruck owner (Mater.) He learns an important life lesson, decides to open a practice in the small town, blah blah blah.

So what's that have to do with a Sony movie about Surfing Penguins? Well...

Picture it! It's 1987. The 80's at this time are cram-packed with Extreme Sports-centric films. BMX had Rad. Skating had Gleaming The Cube and Thrashin'. Breakdancing had Breakin'... let's forget that one. And surfing had a great little film called North Shore.

North Shore concerns the antics of a young Arizona budding artist named Rick Kane (Actor Matt Adler, whose only other feature performance I'm familiar with is the nervous dork buddy of Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf) who happens to be the best surfer... at the local water park. Rick Kane is about as generic a name as you can get, purposely so to express how the kid is just your average everyday American youth.

Rather than go straight to art college, Kane, after winning a surfing contest in said wave pool, decides he'll first spend a summer "SURFING THE BIG WAVES AT NORTH SHORE, WOO-HOO!" One plane ticket and word of caution from his mother later, and Kane is in O'ahu.

On his first outing, Rick tries out one of those big waves, spurned on by a couple of pro's he recognized from his surfing magazines, and gets wiped out in a bad way, cutting himself open on the coral reef, only to be "rescued" by a local island girl, played by the then-incredibly beautiful Nia Peeples.

One night he attends a party at the beach house of Lance Burkhart, world champion surfer extraordinaire and complete asshole, who only seems to surf for the money, the trophies, and the unending vaginafest that are surfer groupies. Rick introduces himself, gushes all over Lance (who towers over him by almost a clear foot) in a sickening display of man-boy love, and is quickly dismissed. On a more upbeat note, he also meets Turtle, the comic relief of the film, a wacky eccentric who is no slouch on the waves himself, and just happens to be the student of O'ahu's best board maker, a mysterious recluse known only as "Chandler."

Turtle introduces Chandler and Rick, who immediately hit it off. Chandler's a bit of an artist himself, and has been struggling to make a fantastic logo for his board making business. He agrees to teach Rick how to really surf, and give him free room and board, in exchange for a custom logo.

Chandler starts by teaching Rick about waves, where they break, how they break, and from there moves on to teaching Rick how the original surfers did it, using progressively more modern boards until he moves up to the "Big Gun" boards the pros use. This includes lessons on crafting his own board, which causes some minor angst between Rick and Turtle, but all is well in the end.

During this time, Rick expresses an interest in signing up for the big surf contest to try his new skills against Lance. Chandler becomes visibly angry about it, and explains that surfers like Lance don't really surf. They just "Shred" the waves apart with flashy gimmicks and tricks. They surf without heart. They aren't true "soul surfers" like he and Rick. As it turns out, Chandler used to be a bit of a name on the pro scene himself, before becoming disillusioned by the antics of guys like Burkhart and allowing his name to fade away into surfing obscurity.

Rick feels for Chandler, but he also feels the need to prove himself, so he signs up for the contest anyway, and makes it all the way to the final match with Burkhart, only to come in second place when Burkhart yanks his ankle leesh going into a wave, causing him to wipe out.

As it turns out, Chandler went to the contest in secret, and is watching the whole affair with a professional photographer who makes all his money grabbing pics of the pro's for the same surf magainzes Rick loved so much in Arizona. He happens to grab a pic of Burkhart yanking Rick's leesh, and Chandler, enraged, demands that Rick take this evidence to the judges.

Rick just smiles and says "None of that really matters, right? Not to us soul surfers," then turns to Lance and says "We both know who really won out there, don't we."

Burkhart gets his trophy, but when the picture goes public, his career is ruined.
meanwhile, Rick returns home, full of happiness, accomplishment, and the knowledge that he'll be coming back after college for more big waves and Peeples Poonanner.

And now folks, let us look at the plot of Surf's Up.

Way down in the antarctic coastal town of Shiverpool lives young Cody Maverick (Rick Kane), a diminutive little penguin who learned to surf on a block of ice, whose father was devoured by an orca when he was but a wee hatchling, who feels that because of his prowess on the tiny four foot waves of the DEEP DEEP SOUTH he's as good as any pro who ever was, maybe even Big Z, a famous penguin surfer who once visited his island, and told him he could do anything he put his mind to.

And so one day a surfing recuiter shows up on the back of a whale looking for talent. Cody's sheer determination wins him a spot on the whale's back, where he meets Chicken Joe (Turtle), the comedy relief of the film, no slouch on the waves in his own right. They travel to a tropical isle, where Cody learns that his hero Big Z died ten years prior during a surfing contest against the current world champ, a surfer named Tank Evans (Lance Burkhart), who towers over Cody by at least a clear foot and has earned the nickname of "Shredder." He's an asshole, who only surfs to win trophies, which he loves so much that he spends hours polishing them, talking to them, taking them out on dates, and presumably, does nasty things with them when the lights go out.

Cody challenges him to a surf-off for insulting Z's memory, and is quickly squashed by his first big wave. He hits his head on a coral reef, and is saved by a local girl (Peeples) who doubles as the beach lifeguard. Seeing potential in him, she introduces him to her friend Geek (Chandler), an out of shape hippyish penguin who seems like a happy-go-lucky kind of gent, who keeps to himself far from the glitter of the beach scene.

Well as it turns out, Geek is in fact Big Z. Ten years ago, while surfing against Tank Evans, he realized he didn't have the chops that the new up and comers had, and they seemed to lack the love of pure (soul) surfing that he had, so he faked his own death and moved into the jungle, occasionally hopping on a board, but mostly just bumming around on the beach.

He takes a liking to Cody, and teaches him how to surf, starting with making his own board, understanding how waves break, etc etc etc. getting the point yet?

This all culminates in the two seemingly breaking off their friendship when Cody decides, against Z's wishes, to sign up for the Big Z Memorial Surfing Competition. Z storms off after hearing of this decision, but secretly attends the contest anyway.

Cody quickly shows off his new skills, and soon it becomes a three-way battle for first between Cody, Tank, and Chicken Joe. It becomes clear that Cody is going to be the clear winner, but when he sees Tank coming up fast to pull a sneaky and knock Joe off his board, he sacrifices his own run to keep Joe safe, causing both Tank and Cody to go screaming into the same jagged rocks that Z supposedly smashed into 10 years prior. Big Z hits the water, and saves Cody by using his knowledge of how and when waves break, thus proving that pure "surfing" in the end, is far more valuable than "Shredding." Cody finds a father he never really had, and the love of his life (the lifeguard, who as it turns out, is Z's neice) and surfs off into the sunset.

Yeah. Clearly the writers of this film were big fans of 80's extreme sports films. The entire movie is filmed from the perspective of a documentary film crew following Cody around filming his adventures. This gives the whole movie a sort of "The Real World: Penguins" feel to it, that just makes it tired and cliched, which it already was from the get-go, due to audiences already getting their fill of CGI penguins antics from last year's equally lackluster (but still somehow Oscar worthy) Happy Feet.

There's your typical every-CGI-house-but-Pixar poop and fart joke humor, flat sight gags, one note characters, and on and on. The animation is, admittedly, stunning, particulalry the water physics, but it's hard to really get excited about it after seeing Finding Nemo. The soundtrack is made up of modern rock songs, two of which are from old Green Day albums, which really goes a long way to completely pulling you out of the world of the film's narrative, though admittedly, the whole "Penguin Sports Channel" gag didn't help matters. It's hilarious to me that non-Pixar CG studios think all they have to do to make a huge hit is a foreign world and humanize it, but then populate it with dull characters and dull jokes (Shark Tale, anyone?)

The voice acting work is good. Jeff Bridges really shines as Geek/Big Z, so much so that I wish the film was about him rather than Cody Maverick. Don't get me wrong, Shia Labouf does a perfectly serviceable job, but the character as written is pretty bland, your stereotypical Gen-X overachieving teen hero. In other words, Rick Kane.

Diedrich Bader of Drew Carey/Beverly Hillbillies movie fame does an admirable job of playing Tank to his supreme and slightly creepy assholiness, but he does so by doing pretty much the same voice he's used for every animated character he's ever done, particularly Warp Darkmatter from the Buzz Lightyear series.

I guess when all is said and done, Surf's Up is not a bad film. It's certainly far better than a lot of the CG films we've been subjected to over the past two years (I'm looking at you, Doogle, Happily N'ever After, and Hoodwinked.) But just like Cars, it's based on an old movie the scriptwriters were hoping no one else would remember, the big difference being that Pixar at least did it with a lot of heart. It's a film that, ultimately, is derivative both in concept, and plot. Compared to even Carss it's real short on soul.

And talent, don't forget talent.

But it'll still make a mint, because parents are dumb.

...Nobody listens to 7th...

VII