Blue
Crush: Little Surfer Girl Makes It Big Blue
Crush: Little Surfer Girl Makes It BigBlue Crush has one thing going for it that makes seeing it truly worth the price of admission. No, not hot babes on waves in skimpy bikinis. No, not some of the most incredible surfing sequences ever captured on film. No, this movie's lone masterstroke--and I'd like to applaud director and former '80s teen idol John Stockwell for including this footage--is that it features . . . drum roll, please . . . FAT GUYS ON SURFBOARDS!!!
Yeah, baby! And I'm not just talking guys with beer guts. I'm talking large-and-in-charge, now-playing-left-tackle-for-your-Green-Bay-Packers BIG. Blue Crush features the enormous Faizon Love of The Replacements in the kind of nut huggers you may see Olympic swimmers wearing as they prepare for the 100m breaststroke. It also features two other enormous men, both football players vacationing in Hawaii, trying to learn how to surf with comical repercussions (of course). But when you see Faizon Love finally master that board and ride that wave into shore, man is it a sight to see!
OK, the fat guys are only a small (er, you know what I mean) part of the movie. Blue Crush is about the competitive sport of surfing told from the female side. The main character is Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth), an amateur who wiped out a few years earlier, nearly drowned, and has never recovered. But the big Rip Masters competition is coming up, and Anne Marie's blonde ambition is to be the best of the best on waves that would make George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg turn their fishing boat around and head back out to sea.
The film is essentially Rocky on a surfboard, Top Gunhanging 10. Anne Marie is Balboa or Maverick. She is the underdog preparing for the big fight or the big flight, trying to exorcise her personal demons, all the while falling in love. In Anne Marie's case, she is smitten with hunky NFL quarterback Matt Tollman (Matthew Davis) the week of the big contest. I guess the annual Rip Masters event coincides with the Pro Bowl. At the same time, she has to deal with some native male surfing rivals, who as a group look like rejects from a Lord of the Flies direct-to-video sequel.
Kate's budding romance and reluctance to show the guys up on the waves doesn't sit well with her two roommate-coach-best friends (the always scary Michelle Rodriguez and newcomer Sanoe Lake) or her bratty kid sister (Mika Boorem). They want her to "Just Do It," enter the Rip Masters competition, and win the coveted top prize and the marketing endorsements that go with it. Anne Marie just wants to survive and thinks he roomies should find their own dreams.
OK, look, if there is anything in the commercials or the trailers for Blue Crush that made you want to see this movie, then definitely go and pay to see it. It is as billed, The Fast and the Furious of surfing flicks. With the help of some seamless CGI effects and Stockwell's thrillingly effective use of Surround Sound, you will feel you are out there among the waves with Anne Marie and her crew. The acting is fairly decent for this kind of movie, too. I really liked Bosworth in the lead, as she comes off as a cross between Elizabeth Shue and Erika Eleniak of Baywatch (minus a couple of cup sizes, of course). Her rapport with her friends is believable and quite charming in spots, too. But if I ever see another chick flick in which a group of girls take off in their fun car, drive like a bunch of a-holes down a two-lane road, and almost kill themselves and others while cackling and listening to the latest Top 40 noise, I think I'm gonna hurl.
I digress.
Blue Crush is a decent movie. The surfing sequences deliver the appropriate amount of spectacle and tension. And, yes, you do get to see hot chicks, hairless guys, fat men, cute children, and even a doggie and his master surf the Hawaiian waves.
Now, I have one question: "WHY NO BEACH BOYS SONGS?! AARGH!"
Blue Crush is rated PG-13 for language, sexuality, and scenes of peril.
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