rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 2007
Directed by Ash Brannon & Chris Buck; produced by Christopher Jenkins; screenplay by Don Rhymer, Ash Brannon, Chris Buck, Christopher Jenkins
Starring (the voices of) Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel, James Woods, Jon Heder, Diedrich Bader
Since 2005 penguins are hot and they have starred in quite some films, especially animation. 'Surf's Up' is aware of that, making fun of it (an early scenes has fun with 'Happy Feet') and changes enough to make it kind of new again. Still, I hope this will be the last penguin outing. This film works up to a point since it is presented as a real-life documentary, almost a mockumentary, following a surfer penguin named Cody (Shia LaBeouf).
The makes of the documentary follow Cody and his dream to be as good as Big Z (Jeff Bridges), who will turn out to be his tutor. Love interest on the sunny island is Lani (Zooey Deschanel), his best friend is a stoner chicken named Joe (Jon Heder) and the enemy that needs to be beaten in a great contest is Tank Evans (Diedrich Bader). All of these characters, and more including family, are interviewed by the documentary makers.
This approach brings enough smiles to the viewer's face alone. Besides that, the script is actually pretty entertaining on its own. It borrows more than once from other animated films, including a slide scene directly taken from 'Ice Age', but it brings a certain freshness to all of it. Compare it to the money-maker 'Shrek the Third' and this film turns out to be way better. Just that chicken between all those penguins made it already better.
'Surf's Up' misses half a star because of its animation. I would not call it bad, but compare it to the films mentioned above and something is missing here. When it comes to plain fun, which will be most important for most viewers, this one belongs to the nicer examples of feature animated films. It is up there with the penguin-moments from 'Madagascar' and admittedly, they were quite funny.