It’s a strange feeling, being reminded that something exists. That’s the exact feeling I got when I logged onto YouChew one morning a week ago and found that several users had changed their avatars to pictures of Surf’s Up characters. Surf’s Up being the computer-animated, surfing-themed, penguin-starring, celebrity-voiced, Academy Award-nominated mockumentary that somehow managed to completely slip my mind until I saw Chicken Joe on cantfly’s head. (Hey, I remembered that much!)
Well, okay, that’s not completely true. I made a short post about seeing the film in that “Box office flops you saw in the theater” thread. As I remember, Surf’s Up constituted part of the mid-2000s wave (no pun intended) of animated penguin films, inspired either by Pebble and the Penguin or March of the Penguins, and including such classics as Madagascar and the Happy Feet movies. The fad clearly hasn’t died down yet, seeing as The Penguins of Madagascar is set to come out later this year. I don’t know why audiences were so hungry for cartoons about penguins, or why it had to happen then, but I actually think that Surf’s Up played a big part in quelling that hunger. It underperformed at the box office, not making back twice its budget (the bar for a blockbuster success) and seemingly disappearing from everyone’s minds the minute they left the theater.
As to why I saw this in the theater: when you’re 11, a “big kid,” any cartoon that looks a little more adult than the other ones has to be the coolest thing in the world. Surf’s Up did at least do that. It had a refreshingly new concept: an animated mockumentary, first attempted by the opening credits in The Incredibles and never attempted since. It had movie badbutt Shia Laboeuf as the main character and Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame in a supporting (and over-advertised) role. It had good animation, and it wasn’t just animation, like Bebe’s Kids. It had a soundtrack to appeal to hip 12-year-olds, although it lacked the Beach Boys song “Surf’s Up,” which I secretly wished they’d play in the closing credits.
Still, the real reason I wanted to see Surf’s Up so badly, taking my whole family with me, was that Jeff Bridges was in it. I don’t lie. I saw The Big Lebowski when I was 10 years old, and though I didn’t understand all of it, I remember thinking, “that bearded guy’s pretty cool.” I didn’t even know which character Jeff Bridges would play – in fact, his character wasn’t in any of the TV spots – but he was in it and that mattered. So, I convinced my brother and mother, also huge fans of Lebowski, that Bridges would play another ethos-defining role in this animated mockumentary, similar to Christopher Guest’s star-making role in This is Spinal Tap. Of course, I wasn’t expecting the animated Spinal Tap of surfing, but I thought the movie should be enjoyable enough.
Not to be confused with Little D
And was it? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’ll have to defend the film from an 11-year-old’s viewpoint, since I last saw it at that age and don’t have any means (or desire, really) to see it again. Some would call the film completely forgettable, and it’s telling that I can’t remember any of the characters’ names except Chicken Joe – ironic, considering how minor he is. Still, I wouldn’t dismiss Surf’s Up completely. I can think of a good number of reasons to commend it.
I really like the concept of an animated mockumentary, which really hasn’t been done since this movie. It seems counterintuitive, what with documentaries better suited to a cheaper live-action format, but it’s still a novel idea, and it never hurts to try. The film fakes the interview process and the sports media coverage pretty well, and while it isn’t too heavy on surfing jargon, it doesn’t need to be, really. It helps that the filmmakers partially based Surf’s Up on real surfing documentaries, like The Endless Summer (1966) and Riding Giants (2004), so they kinda know where they’re coming from. Also, I’ve never been one to praise a movie’s special effects by themselves, but I do feel like saying that the Surf’s Up animators rendered the water especially well. It’s tough to make water look like water, especially in so many kinetic surfing scenes, but they succeed, and that deserves some mention.
I do like Jeff Bridges’ performance, and his character, to an extent; although the latter doesn’t extend far beyond the “mentor” stereotype, he does have a distinct personality – disillusioned, jokily cynical, but still compassionate. Protagonist Cody (I had to look his name up) isn’t the most specific cartoon character you’re going to find, but he’s likeable and somewhat flawed, which helps. And Shia Laboeuf isn’t a bad voice actor, either! Really! He seems more believable as a surfing-obsessed penguin than as Indiana Jones’ son, that’s for sure. Maybe his limitations as a physical actor aren’t on play, so he “works” for the film. I don’t have much praise for Zooey Deschanel’s character; the only thing I can say in her defense is that you don’t have to see Zooey’s face while she talks. That’s a little too harsh, though, because I don’t remember minding the “girl penguin” character, and I doubt I would nowadays. The only character I don't really like is Chicken Joe, actually, because he does absolutely nothing for the movie. At least the villain does something, although he doesn’t have much of a personality beyond being both good at surfing and a dick. (Oh, and the villain’s voiced by Diedrich Bader, from…Napoleon Dynamite? What’s going on here?)
"'The Shredder'"? At least he doesn't have teeth...
If the movie’s only joke was “Riding Giants with penguins,” then I really could’ve slammed it for being unmemorable. I think it’s fairly funny, though. Sure, there are some Shadow the Hedgehog moments where the film tries to appear more edgy than it is, like using Pearl Jam and 311 (!) on the soundtrack, or having the villain say “bleh, tastes like sh–” right before the camera cuts away. Wow, so adult! Still, I’ll attest to some genuinely funny moments. In the film’s first half, cheesy sports channels are milked for all they're worth. There’s a nice bit of black humor when we see close-up pictures of Cody and Chicken Joe’s dads, and then the whole pictures; the first is deceased, and the second is a “six pack combo.” There’s also a scene where Jeff Bridges’ character heals Cody’s sting by peeing on it, and it’s funnier than it has any God-given right to be. People do that in real life, too!
Actually, I can only think of one real criticism of Surf’s Up, but unfortunately, it’s a pretty big one. The film drops its gimmick less than halfway through its running time. Immediately after the first surf race, when Cody has a nasty accident on the waves, we see the camera smoothly follow Zooey and Cody to Jeff Bridges’ cabin. At this point, the mockumentary stops, only to make way for a traditionally filmed, obviously scripted, and mostly by-the-numbers family cartoon. We get the stereotypical “character wins the game” and “character conquers their fears” plots, which, to be fair, were present in the mockumentary part, but not played so obviously. We get a sort-of love story that feels unnecessary and never would’ve made it into The Office. (Hey, The Office with penguins – that’s an idea.) We also get a typical animated blockbuster climax in the final race, complete with flashbacks, a fake death, and lots of special effects. Again, it’s all filmed traditionally, without even a TV sportscam. With this sudden change, the film gains some more narrative structure, but it also loses its novelty, its most entertaining and interesting part.
Ultimately, I’d blame Surf’s Up's relative failure on its pussyfooting. Some people will say that an animated mockumentary was too novel a concept for people to swallow, but I disagree. Audiences didn’t react negatively or forget the film entirely because it tried something they weren’t used to. They reacted the way they did because the film didn’t try hard enough. It seems like the filmmakers (or, more likely, the executives) didn’t think that people would watch a full-length cartoon-documentary hybrid. In a defeatist move, they only took the concept as far as it would go in a commercial, and then made the rest of the film in purely conventional ways. As a result, Surf's Up has two different identities that don’t add up. It reminds me of Pod People – yes, Pod People – a sci-fi horror film that got sidetracked by a cutesy E.T. rip-off. I don’t know who to blame for sidetracking Surf’s Up, but they did more harm to the film than if they completely overhauled it. Audiences probably would’ve warmed up to an animated, family-friendly Best in Show, but they wouldn’t know how to feel about such a disjointed film as Surf’s Up. Ultimately, they’d prefer to forget about it. Even as an 11-year-old, I felt disappointed – disappointed enough that I eventually forgot about it too.
If Surf’s Up had taken its central concept farther and not deceived viewers into thinking it would be something new, I don’t think it would’ve been so unmemorable to most people. It still wouldn’t have won the Academy Award, but it would’ve held some kind of place in animation history as the first of its kind. It probably would've been better written and funnier, too. As it is, it’s a mostly forgettable failed experiment. I do like the concept behind it, though, and I like the film’s good moments enough to want to see more like them. There are more important films to make, and plenty of good ideas for cartoons, but I want to see this one idea done right instead of wrong. If I get to see another big-budget, computer-animated, Academy Award-nominated mockumentary in my lifetime, I will be satisfied. If it stars Jeff Bridges and Eugene Levy, even better.
