Delayed Reaction: Surf's Up

What I Guessed It Was About: Penguins surf. In Happy Feet, they used that to shoehorn a message about global warming in, so this movie is going to use surfing as an entry point for a discussion about fracking*, I assume.

*It's a shame that fracking is a bad thing because that's such a fun word. I'm not anti-Fracking. I'm anti-Anything that causes me not to say "fracking" more.

How I Came Into It: All I knew about this was that it was about surfing penguins (or at least one surfing penguin) and it came out shortly after Happy Feet. I rather disliked Happy Feet. Even though this came from a different studio (Sony) than Happy Feet (Warner Brothers), I prepared for the worst.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) I can't argue with that voice cast. A pre-backlash Shia LaBeouf, pre-Manic Pixie Dream Girl Zooey Deschanel, and post-The Dude Jeff Bridges. If nothing else, Sony got that right. It's certainly an inventive idea and a surprisingly limited movie (in a good way), taking place almost entirely on the one island for the one surf competition. It's a well-developed subculture and I'd be curious to see how true it feels to that actual surfing world.  Based on the little I've seen of similar activities, like skateboarding in Lords of Dogtown, I suspect it's not all that far off. Oh, and props for the dig at Happy Feet ("Do I do anything like sing and dance? No."). Did I mention that I didn't like Happy Feet?

Why I Wish I Hadn't: The documentary crew angle didn't work for me. It's a style that has its benefits. Short of a narrator, there's no better way to get inside a character's head (Scratch that. Inside Out is better, but that's an exception). In cases like this, it's a crutch. I know it's animated, but if a movie uses the documentary conceit, commit to it. Don't just use it when convenient. It shoots some of the time like it's a documentary and some of the time like it's a standard movie. That's lazy.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend