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Surf’s Up Movie Review

Surf’s Up is a 2007 animated mockumentary comedy film directed by Chris Buck. It’s the second Sony Pictures Animation film and easily one of their finest efforts.

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“You know, we’ve known each other way back since,

like… yesterday, I think it was“

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The film follows an aspiring surfer who ends up meeting his idol from the past and he tries to teach him how to surf properly. He still ends losing the tournament, but ending in a respectful second place. Yes, like ‘Cars’, this movie also ended with a loss in the race and that was awesome to witness. It added a lot of authenticity to the overall picture and a sense of realism.

Yes, Geek turning out to be Big Z is an obvious development and a twist which simply doesn’t work if you’ve seen enough movies as I did. However, the highlight of the movie still remains the relationship between the two and those warm, slow and laid-back sequences where the two just chat and he teaches him surfing techniques. I loved the pace in this movie a lot.

Cody Maverick is a fine, relatable and very likable main character well voiced by Shia LaBeouf. Honestly, the voice acting bothered me a bit as it had too many celebrities and it sounded too hip, but that was also fitting for this narrative about modern surfing penguins in a mockumentary approach. That’s why I ended up liking it over time.

Zeke is excellent and a very endearing, well developed character. But unfortunately, the rest of the characters pale in comparison to these two as obviously they did not get enough screen time. But still those two are most important here so I was fine with it. Lani is cool, Tank is a typical over-the-top racing villain and Chicken Joe is a lot of fun. Mikey the bird scout is also quite amusing.

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Surf’s Up features terrific animation, but for its time. Nowadays, it’s obviously not as great, but reading on the reviews from 2007, it surely must have been great in the time when it came out. I liked some of the black-and-white photography here, I loved the surfing scenes and obviously the standout is the character design. All of the penguins look simply fantastic, very faithful to their real-life counterparts and meticulously detailed.

The movie is a comedy and it can be pretty funny at times. I loved the final dialogue with his parents, that was hilarious. Some character interactions can be very amusing here and the film’s characters are realistic and they share quite grounded relationships and interactions that the film’s humor really worked in certain scenes. The dialogue is also phenomenal, quite authentic for an animated film and again very grounded in reality.

But this flick is also very much a mockumentary which is extremely important to its overall story, format and aesthetic. Yes, it’s probably the one animated mockumentary out there and it’s thus groundbreaking when you think about it. And it works. It works so well because the cinematography is terrific and its format is put to great use to strengthen the emotion and character development. It led to the movie feeling quite modern and cool.

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What I didn’t like is the film’s score which is cool for those who like this kind of music, but to me it felt annoying at times. I also disliked the first act which took some time getting used to it as it’s very abrupt in tone and also somewhat unappealing, but eventually it got much better to the point of being such a good movie that entirely deserved its Oscar nomination.

Surf’s Up has an unappealing first act as well as the score, but the animation is excellent for its time with particularly grounded character design of all the penguins. Its ending is brave, the dialogue is very strong and the film works as a comedy owing to amusing character interactions. Above all else, its great aesthetic, very good structure and its mockumentary format added a lot of authenticity to the medium, making it one of Sony’s finest animated efforts.

My Rating – 4