Having endured a plague of talking pigs, ferrets, cows, giraffes and - most conspicuously - penguins over the past decade or so, even the most undiscerning fan of computer-animated features will applaud the makers of Surf's Upfor trying something a little different.
The picture does not, it is true, showcase any individual innovations. Christopher Guest has been making mockumentaries for aeons. The notion of putting naturalistic (improvised?) dialogue into the mouths of anthropomorphic livestock has been around since Aardman Animation launched Creature Comforts. And the film's elegiac tribute to an earlier era of surfing has been lifted wholesale from Stacy Peralta's great documentary Riding Giants.
Knitting those things together during the production of a film from an increasingly conservative genre does, however, demonstrate a degree of bravery on the part of Sony Pictures. Let's hope the picture's relative underperformance at the US box-office doesn't dissuade other studios from further altering the template.
As you may have gathered, Surf's Upconcerns penguins who surf. Cody Maverick, a cheeky young fellow, with a prodigious talent for wave- riding, makes his way to some sunny island for his first professional tournament. While preparing for the final, he makes friends with a stoned chicken, romances a female lifeguard and disinters a superannuated surfing legend. A documentary film crew records his adventures and relays them to us in an engagingly unhurried style.
The film-makers are not to be faulted on their technical achievements. Archive footage of the great days of surfing is presented in gloriously evocative sepia, the supposed hand-held camera work is carried off very convincingly, and the voices could not have been better chosen: Jeff Bridges is in Big Lebowskimode as the aging genius; Shia LaBeouf is, like, totally total as Cody.
Sadly, a cursory examination of the plot reveals similar arcs and morals to the ones we endured in Barnyard, Ice Ageand too many other chatty animal flicks. This is a familiar gift in an unfamiliar package. But at least they're making an effort.
