Surf's Up

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With March Of The Penguins, Happy Feet and Madagascar, there's something about penguins that's hot at the moment and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while with the almost perfect Surf's Up. First time directors Brannon and Buck take Christopher Guest's ad-lib mockumentary approach to this, the Spinal Tap of the animated docu-spoof penguin surfing genre (niche enough for ya?). The story follows Cody Maverick (LaBeouf) who, after a chance meeting with legendary surfer Big Z, dedicates his life to the sport. Unfortunately Big Z died while hanging ten and Cody dreams of eclipsing his hero by winning the annual Big Z Memorial Surf Off run by crass promoter Reggie Belafonte (Woods). With ESPN's coverage of the championship, Cody gets his chance to strut his stuff in front of the cameras but pride soon turns to embarrassment when he's wiped out by boorish current champ Tank Evans (Dietrich Bader) before the competition even begins. Nursed back to health by Geek (Bridges), Cody learns that winning isn't everything - but is Geek really Big Z in hiding? Sony have surpassed last year's Happy Feet, which really raised the bar in terms of animation, with this absolute gem of a movie. Although it riffs on surfing greats like Big Wednesday, Endless Summer, Riding Giants and Into The Liquid, you don't need to have seen those movies to appreciate the jokes - and there are plenty of them in the improvised dialogue between LaBeouf, Heder and Bridges, who brings his Dudeness (or 'Duder' or 'El Duderino' if you're not into the whole brevity thing) to Big Z. Surf's Up doesn't waste a lot of time messing around with a love story, nor are there dance numbers and the characters don't sing along to classic songs - it's all story and laughs. The only disappointment is that they sometimes veer off from the mockumentary angle, and calling the movie Surf's Up without using The Beach Boys or Jim Steinman on the soundtrack. Boo.