Blue Crush (2002)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The first must-see film of the year.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

"Blue Crush" was not based upon a novel, a short story or a play but upon a non-fiction journalistic article ("Life's Swell" by Susan Orlean). This is not an unprecedented phenomenon- "Saturday Night Fever", for example, was also based upon such an article- but it is nevertheless an unusual one. Non-fiction is a highly important part of the publishing and broadcasting industries, but the same is not true of the cinema. There have been occasional exceptions ("March of the Penguins" being a recent one), but in general film-makers have taken the position that documentaries are something best left to television. So, despite its provenance, the story told in this film is a fictitious one. (As, of course, is the story told in "Saturday Night Fever").The film's surfing sequences have been much praised, and rightly so. Like most Britons I have never tried surfing- weather conditions here are hardly conducive to it- but the exhilarating sequences in this film capture something of the sport's excitement and beauty and go some way towards explaining just why its devotees can get so fanatical about it. You cannot, however, make an entire feature film out of surfing sequences alone. (Well, you probably could, but you would have difficulty getting it shown anywhere except for a few art-house cinemas). So the film-makers had to come up with some sort of storyline to fit around them.What they came up with is a sort of double love story, "girl loves boy" plus "girl loves surfing". The main character, Anne Marie, is a young woman living in Hawaii where she works as a hotel chambermaid. Her great ambition is to be a champion surfer and the film explores the story of how she fares when she enters a prestigious surfing competition, with a subplot about the progress of the relationship between Anne Marie and her boyfriend Matt, a professional footballer whom she meets while he is staying in her hotel.Unfortunately, this plot is banal and uninteresting. It doesn't help that Kate Bosworth, who plays Anne Marie, gives such a poor performance; she mumbles so much that I had difficulty understanding a lot of what she is saying. The rest of the cast are not much better, except perhaps Matthew Davis as Matt; he may not be a great actor, but at least he speaks clearly and distinctly. Yet beneath the bland, feelgood plot there are hints of something deeper and more interesting struggling to get out. We hear of two traumatic events in Anne Marie's past, of how she nearly drowned during a previous competition and as a result abandoned the sport temporarily, and of how she was abandoned by her mother who ran off with a boyfriend. As a result Anne Marie has been forced to care for her younger sister Penny herself, with some help from her friends Eden and Lena. (Don't they have children's services in Hawaii?)The trouble is that we merely hear about these events in retrospect. It might have been if they had actually been shown to us, possibly in flashback, which would have given us a more rounded picture of Anne Marie's personality and the forces which produced it. This would have made for a more interesting film, a story of a woman's triumph over adversity rather than a standard love story against a sporting background. Such a film would probably have needed a more accomplished actress than Bosworth in the main role, but it might have been more rewarding. 5/10. (3/10 for the film itself, with two bonus points for the surf scenes).

This was a very formulaic athletic/sports movie which hews closely to all of the genre's conventions. That said, however, it is all done pretty well. There were no real false notes on the acting, which means that the script had to be pretty decent, as even great actors can rarely overcome bad dialog. Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake also all looked very nice in swimwear. The cinematography had to be very challenging and looked great, even though surfing footage can be a bit monotonous, going all the way back to "Endless Summer". Interesting portrayal of the surf spots where a hundred or more surfers are competing for waves. There were some annoying rap "songs" on the soundtrack which detracted from the movie a bit.

Anne Marie Chadwick (Kate Bosworth) is a local surfer girl with best friends Eden (Michelle Rodriguez) and Lena (Sanoe Lake) aiming to surf the Pipe in competition. Her little sister Penny (Mika Boorem) is getting more rebellious especially when their mother leaves town. She struggles against testosterone driven surf culture, and her disgusting job as a hotel maid. However the arrival of pro football quarterback Matt Tollman (Matthew Davis) may distract her away from her goal.On the surface, this movie has beautiful babes in beautiful exotic locales. Beneath the surface, there is a compelling underdog story. It has emotions. She has to overcome her fears. Kate Bosworth is good as a girl unsure of herself. Rodriguez is the girl with attitude to spare. It's more than a simple exploitation film.

Some sports movies are about sports (Remember the Titans) some are about the people who play them (Girl Fight). Blue Crush makes a huge mistake of choosing the latter approach, and it asks the viewer to invest in a handful of characters who are largely under fleshed, and never amount to much more than bodies in bikini's or shorts. The story is choppy and lacks fluidity, resulting in rushed characterization, a lack of explanation, and worst of all, The movie is not very exiting.Blue Crush's sole effectiveness, is that director John Stockwell has designed some phenomenal shots. He is able to work the camera behind the waves, below them or up atop them, sometimes onto the surfboard itself. Blue Crush may have some effectiveness as a sea spectacle but it is a superficial one. It's a flimsy story about flimsy people, frequently predictable. Offering a few laughs and few smiles, in an otherwise bland motion picture.