Film review: Surfs up!

Surf's Up @ IMDB

You know what, I always thought this was a spin off of Happy Feet.

Apparently it was developed entirely separatley at the same time, just pure co-incidence. It was, of course, the dancing penguins that got all the press whilst this film was kind of pushed to the side.

This is a shame really as in many ways this is the superior film. It even got nominated for an Oscar for the Best Animated film.

So, we have penguins. In this case, surfing penguins. So far so cute. But here's the rub: the film is setup like a documentary as we follow one penguin's dream to enter a big surfing contest named after his surfing idol, Big Z.

The documentary setting immediatley sets it apart from all the other kids CGI films and gives it a breath of fresh air. They throw in roughed up old footage, photos, everything to complete the illusion of this being filmed on the hoof and assembled in an edit suite.

The voice acting is good (Jeff Bridges gives us a penguin version of The Dude, Shia LeBouef does his usual thing) and the humour is funny. It must have helped that one of the directors worked on Toy Story which further proves that it takes Pixar (or even someone who used to work there) to really understand CG kids films and make them into something special.

Very enjoyable.

In a word? Tubular.