Surf's Up (Widescreen Special Edition)
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Actor: Chris Buck, James Woods, Jeff Bridges, Mario Cantone, Shia LaBeoufBrand: Sony
Composer: Mychael Danna
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Animated, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 85 minutes
Published: 2007-10-01
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-09
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Surf's Up (Widescreen Special Edition)
DVD Review: Originality Elevates Some Spectacular Visuals
Summary: 4 Stars
It's not too hard to spot trends in computer animated feature films. If talking animals or insects works for one studio, you can be sure all of the remaining companies will have a version of their own. This trend can be seen in the area of animated penguins as well though Surf's Up is guilty of borrowing nearly nothing from the competition.
Surfs Up literally began on a unique premise: It threads the needle between a typical narrative-driven story, and an action sports documentary. The hot & cold Shia LaBeouf provides the voice of Cody Maverick quite convincingly. Cody is a young penguin with aspirations of becoming a professional surf champion despite his distant home in the frigid arctic and very little support from his family.
His natural talent coupled to his underdog back-story results in the attention of a documentary film crew. In his documented travels from ice block-riding beginnings to stardom, Cody hooks up with a burnt out surfing chicken (voice by Jon Heder), a beautiful, penguin lifeguard (Zooey Deschanel), an arrogant competitor (Diedrich Bader) and a mentor (Jeff Bridges).
The moral of course is that the destination is sometimes less important than the voyage and looking back on the film as a whole, it succeeds fairly convincingly even considering that the latter part of the first decade of the 2000s will surely be remembered for the world's collective and sudden interest in penguins. For a moment there documentaries like March of the Penguins had the populous' attention and hearts and animated pictures such as Happy Feet, The Penguins of Madagascar, and Surf's up were on the scene to offer a slightly lighter hearted approach to the subject matter.
What separates Surf's Up from all of the rest of the flightless bird entries of the era (aside from the surfing slant) is the fact that the entire movie is designed, quite flawlessly I should mention, to resemble a documentary piece. What's that, you ask, a documentary like National Geographic would put out about the trials and tribulations of ice-dwelling penguins in the arctic? Absolutely not. Rather a documentary that would be right at home to real life surfers or skateboarders with the characters continually acknowledging and even interacting with the camera crews following them around.
The premise revolves around some very human-like talking animals who eat, sleep and drink the surf culture and is done so with enough poise to surely delight real surfers without boring those viewers who know only that surfing is a sport involving water and a wooden board.
Perhaps most impressive however are the visuals themselves. Sony Imageworks may not yet have the respect or recognition as say Pixar, Blue Sky, or Dreamworks but if the lighting and texturing used in Surf's Up are any indication of what they're capable of, expect that stat to change. The water effects, weather, and waves are truly breath taking throughout the 85-minutes. The waves in particular are absolutely amazing to behold. The character models are solid and appropriately fun and the animation offers up nothing deserving of complaint.
The humor is, for the most part, low-key with gags and lines of dialog pretty evenly distributed to appeal to kids and adults alike. This is one of those rare animated films that will likely appeal even to teens who generally steer clear of the whole genre lest word of their involvement leak and ruin their reputation.
In all Surf's Up is a surprisingly under-hyped entry in the ever-increasing pool of computer animated feature films. With excellent performances by Jeff Bridges and Shia Labeouf, perhaps the biggest surprise comes in the form of Jon Heder's (of Napoleon Dynamite fame) vocal performance as a surfing chicken; a performance that can actually be appreciated more by watching the behind-the-scenes featurettes included on the disc.
Description of Surf's Up (Widescreen Special Edition)
Surf?s Up is an animated feature that goes behind the scenes of the high-octane world of competitive penguin surfing. The film profiles Cody Maverick, an up-and-coming surfer as he enters his first pro competition. Inspired by his hero, a legendary wave rider named Big Z, Cody leaves his family and his town of Shiverpool, Antarctica to travel to Pen Gu Island for the Big Z Memorial Surf Off. Cody believes that winning will bring him the admiration and respect he desires. But when he unexpectedly comes face to face with a washed up old surfer named The Geek, Cody begins to understand that the greatest champion isn?t always the one who comes in firstBestsellers in DVD
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