Review of "Surf's Up"

It’s fresh, it’s fun and it’s family friendly – the first animated surfing mocumentary in history, and it might just start a new trend. Over the years, animators have had their favourite creatures: we’ve had swarms of insects and bugs, enough monsters and ogres to fill a castle, and now it seems to be penguins who are top of the pecking order.

Surf’s Up follows the exploits of penguin surfing champ wannabe Cody Maverick (voice of Shia LeBouef) who was born small and who has something to prove to his conservative family, his dull fish-collecting hometown of Shiverpool, and to himself. As a young penguin chick he was awestruck by the legendary Big Z (voice of Jeff Bridges), the world’s greatest surfer. But Big Z was wiped out without a trace in the World Finals by self-assured penguin surfer Tank Evans (voice of Diedrich Bader), and his take-no-prisoners approach to winning. That was ten years ago and no one has beaten Tank since. After being spotted by the hilarious talent scouting duo of Mikey (voice of Marion Cantone) and Reggie (voice of James Woods), Cody finds himself in the water with the penguin world’s best surfers including Tank and Chicken Joe (voice of Jon Heder), the most laid back chook and surfer dude you’ll ever see - so laid back that he somehow manages to pass as a penguin. Helping Cody from the beach – and sometimes in the water - is surf lifesaver Lani (Zooey Deschanel).

The exuberant freshness and energy of the film comes from the use of the documentary format to skip us around the story and its truly endearing collection of characters. The narrative never gets too seriously grounded – except for the inevitable falling- in-love sequence where traditional story-telling takes over – and directors Ash Brannon and Chris Buck (both with long credentials in animation) play the low key, ironic humour for all its worth. They also add their own voices as the filmmakers who don’t always get it right, and find time for some hilarious side adventures with Chicken Joe and a tribe of feral penguins when things do get serious – in fact Chicken Joe steals the movie from right under the penguins’ flippers. The voice-over work is lively and full of sparkle, and you get the very real sense that the cast enjoyed doing this together. It’s a real charmer and should be enjoyed by young and old, even if you thought you’d had enough of penguins on the screen.