Secondhand Reviews: "Soul Surfer"

Rated PG for some violence, including what has to be the single most non-graphic shark attack ever filmed.

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Hollywood seems to love almost nothing better than the inspirational true story. If somebody has some experience that would seem to be impossible to recover from and does so anyhow, you'll find the film rights snapped up so fast it'll make your head spin. And in almost every case, the resulting movie in its fictional form is too Hollywood fake to be nearly as inspirational as a straight nonfiction documentary would have been. The facts are never dramatic or interesting enough. And it looks like we have the usual once again in "Soul Surfer".

This is the story of Bethany Hamilton, a dedicated surfer (in a family of surfers), who, at age 16, had her left arm bitten off in a shark attack. Obviously, nobody thought for a second that she would ever surf again at all, much less do so competitively... except that Bethany herself was determined to prove otherwise, and was back on the board and in the water within three weeks of the attack, and eventually competing again on a championship level, and at least occasionally winning. It's one of those stories that would seem to be dramatic enough that there's not much you could do to mess it up as long as you stick to what happened.

HOWEVER... and isn't there always a "however"?... we get the usual problems. There seems to be this notion that if you show the protagonist grappling with too many "dark night of the soul" depressions, the movie will be too depressing and not enough people will want to see it... let's just forget that the further you travel FROM depression to triumph, the greater the triumph is. I just don't believe that Hamilton's recovery was as comparatively easy as it's depicted in this movie... there's a few moments of doubt, sure, but still, it happens so quickly you'd think it wasn't much more than a stubbed toe. And it's very likely because the Hamiltons actively cooperated in the making of this film, but everybody has short tempers and is hard to get along with SOMETIMES, even nice churchgoing people like them. You wouldn't know it from this movie, though.

The acting is almost uniformly bland throughout, too. I was a bit concerned at first about AnnaSophia Robb as Bethany, since she was so good earlier in her career in "Because Of Winn-Dixie" and "Bridge To Terabithia" and so nothing here... I thought she might be losing her naturalness as she grew older. But then I realized that Oscar-winner Helen Hunt leaves virtually no impression as Bethany's mother, and Dennis Quaid almost lethally over-acts as her father. And that's not even beginning to deal with the non-performance of Carrie Underwood as Bethany's friend and leader of the church World Vision group (Bethany accompanies the group on a mission to help victims of a Tsunami). I didn't realize there was a female equivalent to the woodeness of Keanu Reeves, but now there is. I just hope they never co-star in the same movie, it could be fatal. Do you really want to support the acting career of another "American Idol" star? Didn't we learn anything from "From Justin To Kelly"?

The only performance that feels even remotely natural and unforced is, of course, in a role that doesn't give its performer much to do, though what little he does is important. Kevin Sorbo, formerly TV's Hercules and a really decent guy in person (yes, I did meet him once) is quite good as the family friend who happens to be with Bethany during the shark attack and is responsible for her not dying there and then. He's convincing as a caring, concerned friend who unfortunately isn't on screen often enough.

Now, mind you, there are the actual surfing scenes themselves. These are spectacularly filmed and even for someone such as myself, who has never been a real follower of the sport, they look amazing. Whether you actually are seeing the actors themselves or a stunt double (I understand that Robb was doubled by Bethany Hamilton herself in some of her more technically difficult stunts), you clearly understand the difficulty of the sport and what the surfers are achieving... and the camera puts you right into the middle of the action so that it almost seems like you're riding those waves themselves. Actual surfers looking to see whether the films accurately portrays their sport will, I think, be very pleased. And I think it says something about how little we really need 3-D movies that they could achieve these kind of effects in a film made entirely in good old old-fashion, glorious 2-D.

"Soul Surfer" is by no means a bad movie. A lot of people will love it and accept it for what it was intended to be, and I don't question the seriousness of the filmmakers in trying to really inspire their audience. But real life doesn't have those endless musical training montages (as this film has more than once) and once I see the second montage, I start having a kind of "Phony Hollywood Uplift Bio" allergic reaction. I do think that the true story of Bethany Hamilton is indeed the definition of GENUINE uplift, and more power to anyone who can get that from this movie. Myself, though, I'd have preferred a documentary on the subject.