Surfs Up!

I was very pleasently surprised with the movie Mrs Titan and I watched last night. We checked out Surf's Up, the other animated peguin movie from 2007. The movie stars Shia LaBeouf as a young, cocky penguin from Antarctica who goes to compete in a tropical surfing competion.

It sounds pretty...well pretty boring and derivative. How many other films have we seen that are exactly like this? Well, as it turns out, not so many. Yes, it's plot was a lot like many other animated movies these days, but it was not like those movies.

It's filmed as if it were a documentary. It looks as if it were filmed with individual standing camera men. No big fancy shots for the action. There are interviews where you hear the producers ask the characters questions, there are shots film as if from mounted cameras on the surfboards. I was really impressed with the direction. I hardly ever notice the direction in animated films, but I did in this one and I loved it. It felt as real as a movie about talking, surfing penguins can.

It is a lot of fun, but it didn't seem as if it would be as fun for kids as it was for us. It was rated PG instead of G, and it just felt more adult than many of these animated films. We really enjoyed it, but then, we watch a lot of documentaries and could see what the film makers were trying to do. The story even had a couple of small (and predictable for me) twists that made the movie fun and gave it a decent message without being preachy. check this movie out and hopefully you will be as pleasently surprised as I was.