Surf's Up

"Surf's Up" is a really good animated movie. For me.

The whole movie is making fun (I don't know whether it's making fun or not), but the whole movie is actually in the reality TV show format. It started with a penguin called Cody Maverick, who was inspired by Big-Z, a supposedly legend of the whole world of penguin surfers.

Cody surfs. All day.

His mission is to get out of his very boring hometown called "Shiverpool" in Antartica (where else penguins live?), where his big brother, Glen, always ridicules him for surfing all day and good for nothing. I can feel the frustration that Cody has. At some point, I feel like Cody too if I was bullied like that. But Cody is proud of him for being a surfer. For him, it's all about being somebody like Big-Z. Cody always wanted to be like Big-Z. For him, Big-Z is everything and he'll do everything for it.

Anyway, that's the opening. You might not realized it, but "opening" that introduce a "hero" is very important. And it captures our imagination what's going to happen. How Cody is going to be like Big-Z? Is he going to go out of Shiverpool? How? What's the ending?

Well, this is how. A talent agent (trust me) came to look for the best surfer in the whole Antartica and that's when Cody got picked up to Pen Gu island.

The only surprising thing (and I didn't really expect) is that, he actually found Big-Z and learned from him, and the best thing is that, Cody develops his own style. I don't want to go analyze into the detail, but the best scene (and quite philosophical) is when he learned how to make the board before he surfs. That's the best. I love it.

Anyway, I found that the movie took some references from the original skateboard (1970s) documentary: Dogtown and Z-Boys (that's probably where the Big-Z name came up). I've seen that documentary, and it's really great.

To understand the context of Surf's Up movie, you might want to watch that documentary.

By the way, Surf's Up is a title of an album of The Beach Boys. You can also visit Cody's myspace here: Cody Maverick Myspace page