Surf's Up (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #5 extract: Surf's Up (2007)

Utter genius. Surf's Up is not only the best penguin movie ever made (if such a genre can be claimed to exist) and probably Shia Labeouf's best movie, but one of the best animated American films ever conceived. 

With phenomenal performances all-round and a perfectly executed premise - one that has latent brilliance written all over it - Surf's Up gets better every single time I re-watch it. Every minute detail of animation and 'camera work' has very clearly been meticulously created, conjuring wondrous aesthetics and an almost absurd amount of verisimilitude for a cartoon mockumentary about surfing flightless birds. I urge anyone who hasn't seen this recently to re-watch it just for the small bits of animation - the way a log rolls, the manner in which characters act when not the focus, the way waves roll and water spurts. 

Beyond this, Surf's Up is smart, witty and without an whiff of being just a kid's movie. I could go on to praise this film for thousands of more words, but I'll end with a final recommendation: go see this movie.