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Shelf Beauties |
Surf's Up I love penguins, but I am so
sick and tired of those tuxedoed birds right now.
March of
the Penguins made us all fall in
love with the cuddly creatures and admire their amazing strength. Shia LaBeouf provides the
voice for Cody Maverick – a 17-year old surfing penguin who
dreams of escaping
Shiverpool’s fish sorting factories to become a champion
surfer like his idol,
Z. Opportunity
knocks when Mikey (Mario
Cantone), the talent scout for big time promoter Reggie Belafonte
(James
Woods), allows him to enter the Penguin World Surfing Championships,
but it
might be his new friend, Chicken Joe (Jon Heder), and a strange mentor,
Geek
(Jeff Bridges), who teach him what he really needs to be a champion. Surf’s
Up could
have been total drivel, but it’s saved by the bright idea to
make the movie
feel like a documentary. Anyone
who has
seen The
Office knows what I am talking about (and not enough of
you are
watching it on Thursdays at 9 PM on NBC, so get started!). Directors Ash Brannon and
Chris Buck guide us
through Cody’s life and his big opportunity by interviewing
him, his family,
other contestants and more. It
gives the
audience all of the information we need, and engages us in ways you
might not
have thought were possible. Suddenly,
what could have been a run of the mill, cliché, silly
kid’s movie has you
seeing the characters in a whole new light with a strange connection to
them. It feels
honest and soulful all of the sudden.
The writing team
(all four of them) doesn’t provide the greatest dialogue you
will ever hear, and
I’m hard pressed to remember any line from the movie, but
this is not a Woody
Allen film. Brannon
and Buck fill Surf’s
Up with plenty of physical and slapstick comedy, wild
surfing scenes, jokes
about poop and more to keep the kiddies’ eyes interested,
while never
complicating the movie’s plot (which is almost non-existent). Even with all of this, you
might be surprised
how laid
back, less frantic and less
loud the movie is than you might expect.
Throw in some cuter than cute baby penguins and a few more macabre jokes
adults will laugh at, like
how fathers of the characters died, and you get a passable movie. Believe it or
not, surfing penguins are much less annoying than you might imagine. 2 ½
Waffles (Out of 4) Surf's Up is rated PG for mild language and some rude humor (the word poop comes up a few times).
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