Surf's Up

"Surf's Up" is a good movie. Ashley and I went out to see this last night, and we both enjoyed it. I guess you could say it appeals to young and old alike. A while back I took all the kids to see "Happy Feet", we might as well have just rented "An Inconvinient Truth". For what was advertised to be a funny, dancing/singing penguin movie, it turned out to be a depressing "Free Willy" style indoctrination attempt. That being said, "Surf's Up" is a breath of fresh air. It wasn't as original or amazing as Pixar would have done, but then that's asking a lot. What the filmmakers undertook, the succeeded in. They made a movie about penguins surfing, and it was cool. They created a handful of interesting characters, with good voice acting. They showed us some surfing, and with some real good attention to detail, it was obvious that there was some professional surfer assistance in the production. Finally, it was a movie about the ocean, specifically waves. Now most of this can be accomplished by merely copying scenes from "Endless Summer" and other surfing movies, but I think these guys did more than that. Riding up the waves, getting up on top of the swell, seeing the beach down on a lower level. The filmmakers really tried to capture what it feels like to be out in the water waiting for the next perfect wave. As a side note, I really liked how they used Jeff Bridges, his character reminded me of a kid-friendly version of The Dude from "The Big Lebowski".