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Super dude Jeff Bridges and up-and-comer Shia Labeouf lend their voices to a couple of surf crazy penguins in Surf's Up. It's a fun and frothy CG caper that puts Sony Pictures' Imageworks in league with Pixar. The critics like totally lapped it up, so then why did it belly flop at the box office...?
Go With The Flow
Happy Feet was first off the mark at cinemas so perhaps audiences felt they'd seen it all before. But they'd be wrong. A series of featurettes reveals innovation behind the scenes as the filmmakers encourage the actors to improvise and develop a new type of 'motion capture' technology to give that handheld, documentary feel. "It's like we're jamming," explains a laidback Bridges who proceeds to whip out his ukulele. Footage from the sound studio shows just how much fun the players had making it up as they went along.
Water is notoriously difficult to animate and the techies show us exactly how its done in Making Waves. Every splash, foam burst and 'lip spray' is lovingly crafted using digital jiggery pokery and, wouldn't you know it, there was also a time for a research trip to Malibu Beach. (The sight of computer geeks trying to ride the waves definitely ups the comedy value.) Complementing this featurette is a series of progression reels laying bare the animation process.
Four deleted scenes are mostly presented in storyboard format, but you can also see Jane Krakowski and Mindy Sterling improvise in the recording studio. As Sheila and Doris, the wacky former girlfriends of Big Z (Jeff Bridges), all their scenes wound up on the cutting room floor. It's a shame since they have great chemistry together, but the directors explain that all this banter was taking the focus off Cody (LaBeouf) who is, after all, the hero of the story.
Chilling Out
The directors talk more about their "organic" approach to the storytelling in a New Age main commentary. We're told that "Surfing is a metaphor; it's really about life..." etc. But for those who are too young to care, there's the Secret Spot menu, which boasts four great set-top games. Whale Hopping With Chicken Joe is basically un updated version of 80s classic Frogger. Mind the spurting blow holes...
Junior rapper L'il Chris is your guide to the blue carpet premiere, but there's also a penguin's eye view of the proceedings. The surfing pros teach a master class in the art of hanging ten, and if you don't know what that means, check out Arnold's Zurfinary.
Two animated shorts featuring The ChubbChubbs round off the extras, and if you scour the deleted scenes menu you'll find a couple of Easter eggs revealing a ChubbChubb cameo hidden in the film along with various UFO sightings. With so much going on, kids will be happily immersed for hours.
EXTRA FEATURES
Surf's Up DVD is released on Monday 10th December 2007.
