Matho
The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
alcantaraj-16594
"Surf's Up" is probably the most decent film I have ever seen. The animation's decent, the voice acting's decent, the story's decent, the comedy's decent. That's it. The best word to describe this film is the word "decent."
Robert
Movies with penguins tend to be environmental. By that, I mean the plot basically consists of humans who do something evil or otherwise are causing harm to either the penguins or to other creatures. Doing so, the message is to not harm nature. I love nature and don't want to destroy it, but when movies are dedicated to showing that humans are the only cause, then I get annoyed and frustrated.Happy Feet is a good example. The first one was major political. The second not so much, but still consisted of humans doing evil things (how dare they eat chicken!). Surf's up was different. It didn't mention humans at all, in fact I dare say it may have been a penguin world for all I know.I loved the story, and especially loved the look and feel the film was looking for. Shaky cameras making it seem like actual people were there interviewing everyone. It was really nicely done.I rate this 7/10.
Electrified_Voltage
There are some computer animated films from the past few years which I've known about for a while but still haven't seen, and that was the case with "Surf's Up" until this month, three years and a few months after it came into theatres. I knew it was a movie about surfing penguins, and I had never seen anything like that before, though that obviously didn't mean I was guaranteed to like it. I knew this Sony Pictures Animation effort did not have the amazing reputation which many Pixar movies have, but it did seem to be fairly popular, so I figured it would be another charming piece of CGI animation for the family, like most of the other ones I've seen through the years. Fortunately, I wasn't proved wrong when I watched it.Cody Maverick is a teenage rockhopper penguin who has lived in Shiverpool, Antarctica his entire life and is currently being followed by a documentary film crew. He loves surfing, and his idol is Zeke "Big Z" Topanga, a penguin who was once a surfing champion but is now believed to be dead. Cody doesn't get encouragement from other residents of Shiverpool, and that includes his brother, Glen, who is much bigger than him. However, the ambitious penguin still remembers when he got to meet Big Z once in his childhood, and the words of encouragement he got from the champion surfer, so the young penguin is still determined to be like his idol. When surf talent scout Mikey Abromowitz comes to Shiverpool searching for participants for the Big Z Memorial Surf-Off on the tropical Pen Gu Island, it takes some struggle, but Cody manages to convince him that he is worthy. He travels on a whale with Mikey and a dimwitted but friendly rooster named Chicken Joe, and the documentary crew follows. After arriving on the island, Cody soon meets Tank "The Shredder" Evans, a large, arrogant penguin who is the current surfing champion and will be hard to compete with!Viewers can expect these CGI films to be very pleasing to the eye, and this one is no exception, with the characters and backgrounds, showing a CGI version of Antarctica and then a tropical island with beaches and a jungle interior. I'll admit some of the backgrounds look primitive for 2007, looking more like painted backgrounds than computer-generated ones, but this is only a very minor flaw. I laughed at lot while watching the film, during scenes such as the sibling rivalry between Cody and Glen around the beginning, Chicken Joe getting captured by a tribe of penguins and not realizing what they really want him for, and so many others, so the humour in "Surf's Up" also works. The characters are generally well crafted, and while Shia LaBeouf may not do the greatest job providing the voice of Cody, his performance is acceptable, and there are better voice-overs provided here, including Jeff Bridges as Big Z and Jon Heder as Chicken Joe. The story is a well written and overall entertaining one with some touching moments, and it's better than it may look near the beginning. This particular film from Sony Pictures Animation has not impressed as many viewers as many other CGI films have in the past fifteen years (such as many of Pixar's features, and perhaps certain efforts from DreamWorks Animation and Blue Sky Studios as well), but it seems to have received more praise than criticism, which I can understand after watching it myself. While it's not absolutely stunning from start to finish, it's mostly very entertaining for several reasons and is bound to leave viewers in a good mood, as animated family films like this should. "Surf's Up" is rated PG, so it isn't exactly squeaky clean, but even as a film that is marketed as family fare, it certainly could be dirtier, and I think many kids could still really enjoy it. There are lots of computer animated family features out there and this kind of film has lots of fans, so if you like this very popular kind of animation, I wouldn't suggest skipping this film.
