Surf’s Up
It’s not the slickest-looking CG-animated film, but right now, it is the best animated film of the year, but then again, look at the competition so far. But it’s the best one because it has a wonderful blend of story, character (with voices to match), and style that is not often found in animated films nowadays. For that, you can probably thank co-writer/co-director Ash Brannon, a Pixar veteran best known as a co-director on their 1999 masterpiece “Toy Story 2.” The story seems right out of their playbook- reasonably predictable but unquestionably engaging thanks to a strong blend of the right actors with the right material. Shia LaBeouf (fresh off the hit thriller “Disturbia,” soon to be in “Transformers”) stars as Cody Maverick, a penguin from the arctic town of Shiverpool who goes against the grain by wanting to be a surfer like his hero “Big Z,” who disappeared 10 years ago. His chance comes when he gets a chance to ride the waves in the annual “Big Z Memorial” contest against the best flippered competition promoter Reggie Belafonte (a sly James Woods) can find (not the least of which is self-absorbed reigning champion Tank Evans, voiced so over-the-top by “Office Space’s” Diedrich Bader you won’t care how one-dimensional he is). But he’ll have a hard time getting there himself, though he just might make it with fellow competitor Chicken Joe (Jon Heder doing the funniest burned-out chicken in an animated film, well, ever), beautiful lifeguard Lani (the always-valuable and delightful Zooey Deschanel), a old-time surfer the Geek (Jeff Bridges, adapting his iconic “Dude” from “The Big Lebowski” effortlessly to be a mentor penguin).
I think the thing that’s thrown people about this movie- why it hasn’t reached the uppermost levels of recent CG-success at the box-office (unlike lesser efforts like “Shrek the Third” and “Happy Feet”)- is how well it adapts the medium for its’ biggest “high concept” idea (as if surfing penguins wasn’t high concept enough), that being the sports documentary, as if directed by “Best in Show” and “A Mighty Wind” auteur Christopher Guest. If you aren’t familiar with the Guest films, there’s little you’ll be able to do to accustom yourself to the film’s visual style, which eschews the polished perfectionism of the medium’s usual offering to look more like an 80-minute version of the “outtakes” Pixar created for “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story 2.” The camera isn’t always steady, shot transitions aren’t always smooth, and the storytelling isn’t always linear. But if you get in on the joke immediately, I can’t imagine anyone not liking the film outright, which does what every good sports documentary should do, and presents an all-encompassing, unbiased look at its’ subject, and allows the viewer to take in every aspect of it with equal clarity. It’s also a pretty funny movie too, but how it tells its’ story is part of how it succeeds. After “Happy Feet,” “Madagascar,” “March of the Penguins,” and a particularly hilarious episode of “Futurama,” I thought all levels of storytelling about the tuxedoed fowl had been told by Hollywood. I was wrong, and “Surf’s Up” made me happy to be.
