FOR me, there can’t be too many penguin movies. I look forward to flicks about penguins wielding cutlasses (“Penguins of the Caribbean”), devouring each other (“28 Herrings Later”) or getting tortured by the forces of Imperial Japan (“Bataan Death March of the Penguins.”) When they make “Tennessee Tuxedo: The Movie,” I’ll be first in line.
“Surf’s Up,” though, a cartoon about penguin surfer dudes, doesn’t do enough with a righteous premise.
The story of Cody, a fatherless 17-year-old surfin’ bird who wants nothing but to catch the next wave out of Antarctica (where he lives, in the town of “Shiverpool”) is told as a mockumentary. The “Happy Feet” feeling of opera gives way to “The Office.” Characters ask whether the film is rolling, demand another take and step over each other’s lines while the camera shakes.
The actors seemingly improvise much of their dialogue, which is nice for them – Shia LaBeouf in the lead, Jeff Bridges as a legendary older surfer who takes him under his flipper, James Woods as a fast-talking surf promoter, Jon Heder as a goofy chicken and Zooey Deschanel as the girl. But even on “The Office,” the mockumentary format is showing signs of middle age. How many more times can we laugh as Steve Carell turns to the camera and mugs? Plus, the format was designed for unusually gifted actors. Put it this way: For the next hour and a half, would you rather watch a movie or listen to an E! interview with Shia LaBeouf?
Cody, who as a baby penguin once met the greatest surfer of them all, Big Z (Bridges), is determined to make it to a tropical island far from his winter wasteland (cut to a shot of penguins hunkering down in a blinding snowstorm; the title underneath reads: “Summer”) and win the big surf-off against the hulking bully Tank, who tells him, “You’re goin’ down, snowflake!”
Apart from an unsurprising surprise reunion with Big Z, the contest is pretty much all there is to the plot. Mid-movie, there’s so little going on that several scenes are devoted to walking us through the art of planing a log into a surfboard. The girl penguin is an afterthought who takes Cody on a trip through some volcanic tunnels that has nothing to with anything.
At times, the movie is, like California, so loose that it’s happy to just let the weirdness take over. These are the best parts. A baby penguin throws himself into the surf so often that he starts to seem deranged. Another wee bird brags that his surfboard, which seems to be a leaf, comes with “lots of attachments – like a grenade launcher.”
The thug-penguin, Tank, has a perverted fondness for his trophies, whom he refers to as “my ladies” or even, in one case, “my dirty girl.” Some of the verbal riffs are funny, too: “Why don’t you head over to the snack bar and get yourself a big bowl of shut up?”
A lot of this is way over the heads of penguin-size humans, such as the flashbacks that send up overexposed ’60s documentaries about the sunny pleasurelands of California. Worse, long stretches are comedy tundra where nothing funny takes root.
Still, jokes or no jokes, there is plenty to look at: The water animation is such a marvel that you forget it’s computer-generated, and the rockhopper penguins (Robin Williams played one of these in “Happy Feet”) pull off their fruit-salad look. Maybe the next penguin flick will do more justice to the subject. How about going all grindhouse in “Lesbian Vampire Penguins of the SS”?
SURF’S UP
Barely floats.
Running time: 82 minutes. Rated PG (mild crude humor). At the E-Walk, the 64th and 2nd, the 19th Street East, others.