Film Review: Soul Surfer

Soul Surfer should definately be re-titled. A more accurate description of this film would be; 7th Heaven: the Surfing Mishap episode with a poster something like this:

Or my personal choice; Disney Cliché Surfing Movie (Sponsored by Rip Curl). Affronted by overbearing religious themes and pure, unadulterated corn at every turn, I almost left half way through.

AnnaSophia Robb (Race to Witch Mountain) plays the real life Bethany Hamilton, a 13 year old Hawaiian surfer who was savagely attacked by a shark and lost her arm. Overcoming her severe injuries, a tenacious Bethany goes on to re-enter the world of professional surfing, with much success.

Now, in theory, this story has the potential to be an interesting tale of triumph over adversity. In reality, the execution falls audaciously short.

So first, I’ll mention what was acceptable about this flick because it won’t take me long. Dennis Quaid puts in a relatively believable performance as Bethany’s dad and Helen Hunt is not bad as the mother. Action wise, the competition surfing scenes are enjoyable, particularly those in the final act. Ok, that’s the good stuff out of the way.

There are so many things wrong with this film that I’m going to have to list them off one at a time to keep track. Here goes:

1. Bethany

The biggest problem with this story is that our main character, who just had her arm ripped savagely from her body, couldn’t actually care less. That’s right – she’s basically like, meh! The character has been written as such an overwhelming optimist, who isn’t phased by anything that life throws at her, that her cheery disposition makes the audience feel quite peachy about her predicament. We’re almost like, “Oh well, you’ve still got the other one” - (playful arm punch). In reality, I’m sure we would applaud this girl for so bravely taking such a tragedy on the chin but unfortunately, her perenially chipper attitude makes for an utterly shithouse emotional journey. And that goes for her entire family as well. If we don’t care about the main character, her emotional development and the problems she faces, we don’t care about her ultimate success or failure. 

What we needed to see was a dark despair, perhaps even a complete breakdown to a point where she is utterly defeated and can’t possibly go on. What I really wanted to see was a scene of her on the beach, black storm clouds overhead, torrential rain pouring down with her crying inconsolably, sole remaining appendage thrust purposefully into the sky screaming, “Whhhhyyyyyyy!” Well, maybe not that dramatic, but at least then I would have seen and felt her pain. The closest she came to this moment was when she went to see cult lead… errr Sunday school teacher Carrie Underwood, where Bethany asks, “why did God do this to me?”… to which the stock standard religious reply to something bad is dispensed, “Because God must have a plan for you.” Give me a break. Which leads me to...

2. Smothering religious overtones

The next cab off the rank is the god-awful (pun intended) religious dogma thrust down our throats. What I particularly enjoyed was when Bethany, this wonderfully gentle human soul, actually achieves something fantastic and gets sponsored by Rip Curl to enter the pro-tour, but has to cancel going on the ‘feel-good’ cult mission to Mexico to feed starving, handicapped orphans. Now, instead of being supportive and overjoyed… you know, like the church is supposed to be… Carrie Underwood’s character basically cracks the shits and gives Beth the cold shoulder. Ahhh, fundamental religion at its rational, guilty best! If you’re going to make religion a central theme to your story, for the love god (zing!) double check it with the Vatican marketing department. No wonder people are turning away from the church in droves.

3. Score

The film’s score should be an invisible emotion-enhancer. When you get really emotional in a film and can’t quite figure out why, it’s usually because the score is doing its job superbly. Sadly for Soul Surfer, I wasn’t emotional at all – and I could definitely figure out why. Shit music. Prime example; when Bethany gets attacked by the shark. Shortly after this shocking event, a very noticeable and grating music kicks in of what sounds like a hippie drum circle. Now, I’m guessing it’s supposed to be some sort of deep, native Hawaiian tribal song to juxtapose the action – problem was, it sounded more like one of those soothing meditation cd’s on how to align your 3rd chakra. It just made me want to lie down and close my eyes for a minute.

A horrifying shark attack just happened. It is the only adrenalin filled scene in the entire movie. We’ve been eagerly waiting for it for 40 minutes. Now she’s bleeding to death. Everyone is in full panic mode and time is very short. Dammit, we need frenetic and urgent music! How can we feel the panic of these people and the continuing threat of a still hungry shark if I’m dozily slipping into the theta state? Unfortunately, the unmemorable score just slides further downhill from this point (if that's even possible) into obscurity.

4. Special effects

If you’re going to do a movie where your main character loses an arm, make sure that the most important special effect – being the CGI removal of said arm – isn’t a fuzzy mess, where the remaining stump continually changes shape. Enough said.

5. Teenage acting

My best guess is the casting department went down to the local Hawaiian shopping centre, identified the closest age-appropriate group of teens and said, “Hey, wanna be in a surfing movie?” Whether a case of terribly written teenage dialogue or the inability of those teenagers to act in any meaningful way, I just wanted to gag when these doe-eyed idiots spoke. And another thing - all the teenage surfers acted uniformly like mind-controlled, Jesus-loving automatons. Now, I personally know a number of surfers, young and old, and I can tell you right now that these guys are the most aggressive, drugged up, foul mouthed, sex focused dudes on the planet. And whats more, they’ve been that way since pretty much year dot. So, trying to pass this entire community of young surfers off as a supremely angelic, church-hugging bunch of kumbaya warblers is just unrealistic.

6. Clichés

Seriously, if there was an Academy Award for ‘Most Liberal Use Of Clichés In A Feature Film’, they wouldn’t have bothered reading out the names of the other nominees... or even opened the gold envelope. It would be that certain Soul Surfer would win. I’m just going to touch on my favourites because there are too many cheesy moments to discuss. The first, and worst of all, begins with Bethany fighting for life on a hospital gurney. As she slips into unconsciousness, she begins to see… the light. However, as light and tunnel affairs go, this one is a bit different because guess what? Yep… that’s right. She’s surfing toward the light through a perfectly formed barrel for a tunnel, smiling with ecstasy. At this point a groaning sound came out of me that went for a full 3 minutes. I cringe just reading that scene. I mean, just imagine the pitch for this piece by some genius exec…

"So... Beth. Bethmeister. Get ready to be blown (pause for effect)… away! Check this out cochise – so when you’re like, dying and all like, ‘oh, no im dying’ etcetera etcetera… get this… you see… the light – BUT, it’s not just a light at the end of your standard spiritual tunnel, k… Check it, you – are on a surfboard… like, riding a giant barrel INTO the light. BOOM! We’ll get props to surround you with like, raindow coloured singing dolphins, maybe a few sperm whales can wave at you as you ride past... no, wait! Yes. Yes. A thousand turtles arabesque gracefully in the distance too… and finally… at the very last moment… CHABLAM!... you’re back in your body and you’re all like, ‘where’d the singing porpoises go?’… Fade. To. Black.... So… thoughts? Impressions? Congratulatory hugs accepted, right here. Although, I’ve already checked with props and the dolphins are a no go."

Seriously, what retardatron said yes to that?

Second in line was the rival surfer chick. An overacted sour-faced bitch who hates Bethany, just ‘cos. No explanation. No reason other than... ‘cos. But what’s more disappointing is the fact that in every scene, said rival is wearing black. Like, we are so stupid that we can't possibly get that we’re not supposed to like her that they need to dress her like the Grim Reaper. However, as icing on top of this delicious cliché sundae, the rival has the most cheesy change of heart at the very end of the final competition, where she suddenly announces her respect for Beth and as a result, I actually threw up a little in my mouth.

7. Carrie Underwood

Of very special note, country singer Carrie Underwood was just awful as the pious and sickly sweet Sunday school teacher. Based on her performance, I could totally visualise her character preparing the ‘special’ kool-aid for the May 21st, Under 18’s ‘Rapture Jamboree’. Again, a quick call to the Vatican marketing department may have been advisable during the character development process here. Perhaps Carrie should stick to country music and stop attacking my eyes with such vapid and sentimental acting.

So in wrapping up, the real question is, “how could they have done this better?” The answer lies in the final credits, where they show a lot of actual footage of the real Bethany surfing, praying, helping Mexican handicapped orphans and speaking publicly. Now, that stuff was actually quite interesting and leads to the answer. Really, this should have been a doco or some sort of docu-drama using the real footage of her, of which it appears there is quite a lot.

Instead of taking her very specific, one-note story and trying to flesh it out into a multi-dimensional drama piece, mashing together half biography/half fiction, they should have just gone the whole way and tried to make something from her real footage. I think if they would have followed this alternative structure, the saga of this brave young girl’s determination to achieve her dreams would have had immensely more impact.

Unfortunately, in its current form, shoddy writing and cheap production make this otherwise potentially fascinating biography a giant foamy wipe-out.

1 STAR