Surfs Up

1/31/09

This is a GREAT movie.  It is visually stunning and, while formulaic, very satisfying.  My husband came in part way through and was amazed at how beautiful this film is.  It really is worth watching just for the technical mastery of the animation.  It is really that good.  As for the story – my son loved it and we are planning to purchase it for him since it was one of our rentals.  But again – what makes the story nice is that our lead penguin, a surfer named Cody Maverick, needs to decide what he wants in life.  Does he want good friends and to enjoy surfing or does he want to win competitions.  We know what he is going to choose and this plot is pretty much the story line to all surf movies.  But what is nice about this one is that because it is animated the contrast between his choices is made both humorous and pointed.  

The film is shot documentary style so that we get q&a’s from various characters which lets this movie explore the philosophic aspects of the movies plot in a more direct way then is possible in live actions films.  So we have characters discussing what it means to be a winner and what it means to be a friend.  All these “interviews make clear the correct choice is to be a good friend and person and that the pursuit of trophies at the expense of your friends is not a tradeoff worth taking.

The penguin that represents winning competitions is named Tank and he is big and has lovely tattoos.  But he is seriously weird on a personal level.  He has a fetish for his trophies and by fetish I mean fetish.  He also has no friends and one of the little penguins in the movie describes him as a giant trash can filled with poop.  Even though he wins all the trophies no one considers him a winner.

On the other hand you have Chicken Joe. Chicken Joe is a clueless surfer.  He is the only one to go in search of Cody when he disappears after a gnarly wipe out that you want to watch over and over and over from a variety of angles.  He does this because he is Cody’s friend.  But more importantly, at a critical moment when Cody must choose between winning the competition and helping his friend, Chicken Joe is obliviously lying on his surfboard contemplating the clouds.  He isn’t in the competition to win it, he is in it because he LOVES to surf.  At the same moment Tank is talking about hurting Chicken Joe in order to win the competition.  It is a very stark contrast and Cody must choose what kind of a penguin he wants to be. He of course chooses to be a good penguin and that is why I love this film.

Moral education is very important and children movies have always had moral components to them.  But the reality is all good stories have a moral component.  That is what makes them a good story.  We want to hear about people who struggle to decide what kind of person they are going to be and who ultimately choose to be good over winning. Though it is even better when you can have both.