Oscar Cleanup: "Surf's Up" Review - Written by TonyD

"Surf’s Up"
2007
½ out of ****
Director: Ash Brannon, Chris Buck
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Jeff Bridges, Zooey Deschanel


PENGUINS! KILL THE MOTHERFUCKING PENGUINS!

I’ve seen THREE penguin movies this year. The first one was the dreadful, unfunny schlock that just by the title you know what you are getting into – "Farce of the Penguins," made by John Stamos. I thought it was just a bad movie, you know, and John Stamos is as bad as bad can be, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised. The second one that I saw was "Happy Feet," and I’m sure that all of you know what I think about that one so I don’t have to go into much detail for that. And then last night, I watched "Surf’s Up," and now I figured out that it is about damn time that we move away from the penguin idea, and start off with something new.

Shall I say aardvarks?

"March of the Penguins" was just one of them movies that came out at the right time, where there was more shit in theatres than in the toilet. Hey, you try choosing between "Wedding Crashers" and "March of the Penguins," and THEN you look at me. I’d much rather see a movie about penguins living than Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn crashing fun at a party. But what I didn’t know is that I paid money to see something that I will see three more times on DVD, and I was giving Hollywood not only my cash, but my days of long grieving the sight of animated penguins dancing, penguins screaming out that they were horny, and worse of all, penguins surfing.

God, it’s too bad to look.

"Surf’s Up" is not only completely unoriginal with its use of penguins, but with its use of a mockumentary-style ("Borat" only came out seven months before). Besides the completely blandness of the penguins, the documentary crew isn’t at all bland. Actually, they are so bad at documenting the penguin life that if I had a choice between these guys and those MTV guys who do the "Making the Band" shit to make a documentary of me, I’d give the MTV guys five dollars to kick the living crap out of the penguin documenters, and then I would let them film me.

Cody Maverick (a penguin voiced by nonetheless Shia LaBeouf (I lost count in how many films he starred in this year, honestly)) is a young inspired surfer. The documentarian people use him as their topic, so they follow him around and annoy the living shite out of the viewer. We meet some chicken guy, voiced by the wasted piece of sperm that gives itself the name of Jon Heder. We meet some penguin chick who is a lifeguard, and is really conceited. We meet an enemy, who is almost as taunting as the Emo kid that sits behind me in English.

And then, we meet probably THE ONLY great part about this movie, Jeff Bridges, who is kind of like The Dude you know. The Dude for his time and place. He fits in right in there. And that’s The Dude. The Dude, from Los Angeles. And even if he's a lazy man - and the Dude was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in all of Los Angeles County, which would place him high in the runnin' for laziest worldwide. Sometimes there's a man, sometimes, there's a man. Well, I lost my train of thought here. But... aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough. These four are all factors that motivate him to win the Big Z surfing competition.

There is one thing that I hate more than penguins, and that is penguin movies. Every single penguin movie have either retarded penguins, nympho-penguins, penguins who want to chase their dreams, penguins who want to chase their asses, and penguins who just want to tap dance and sing and eat ALL OF THE GODDAMN COOKIES! And now, we got a new one – surfing penguins. Now believe me, I love to see someone surf, and you all know how much I love to see people fall on their ass too, especially when it is someone that I hate. No matter how many times a penguin falls in this movie, though, they make it seem… comedic. Usually, it is only me that laughs whenever someone falls, but this time, it’s supposed to be everyone… and (SURPRISE!) I didn’t laugh.

Actually, each time a penguin fell on their face, I grunted.

There are only so many things that I can take. Watching a movie with penguins four times makes me almost as irritated as listening to the same Soulja Boy song for the entire hour. I saw this happen three times before, and now I can’t take it. Hollywood, if you are reading this, create new ideas or I boycott. Probably after the box-office failure of this movie, you won’t make any new penguin movies, but it won’t stop you making the same movie about dogs, rats, and snakes.

And you even go as far as making me cringe at the star list. Look at who you got, three of the worst actors that Hollywood has today – Dedrich Bader (if you can even CALL him an actor), Zooey Deschanel, and Jon Heder. Seeing them as a penguin (or in Heder’s case, a chicken that I am just dying to put in my oven) is not nearly as bad as seeing their faces, but hearing their damn voices are just as worse.

"Surf’s Up" doesn’t even deserve to be recognized as a shitty penguin movie. It deserves to be recognized as a shitty movie. If Hollywood came up with decent ideas, I may be able to sleep tonight. But instead, I am just waiting with Jon Heder coming up at my bedside, where I will be sleeping with my lightsabre under my pillow and straight porn on my TV. You know a pussy like that wouldn’t come that close to you.