Starring:
Kate Bosworth as Anne Marie
Michelle Rodriguez as Eden
Matthew Davis as Matt Tollman
Sanoe Lake as Lena
Mika Boorem as Penny
Kala Alexander as Kala
Faizon Love
Chris Taloa as Drew
Summary:
It seems like every summer movie season has its fair share of mindless movies aimed at the under-30 crowd. “Blue Crush” is a perfect mindless movie to appeal to the teen troops and it can capture both sexes (featuring attractive ladies in skimpy bikinis and suggested girl power for the females). This would be great if the final product wasn’t a potty-humored, foul-mouthed mess of little surfing and much male chauvinism.
Story:
Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is a surfer living in Hawaii, with her two gal pals, Lena (Sanoe Lake) and Eden (Michelle Rodriguez). She takes care of her preteen sister because their mother seems to have abandoned them. The three ladies love to surf the huge waves of the Hawaii beaches and Anne Marie is poised to compete in the Rip Masters surf competition.
The three women work as hotel maids during the day and Anne Marie catches the eye of a football player (Matthew Davis) vacationing at the hotel. She becomes distracted as he woos her and starts to shift her focus away from surfing. Eden begins to nag her and Anne Marie has to decide which is more important to her: surfing or the new man in town?
Critique:
For a movie that has to do with surfing, there is too little actual surfing footage in the film. When there is a scene with the girls tackling the waves, the movie generally works. Director John Stockwell filmed some great scenes and uses the slow motion technique to his advantage. When a surfer takes a fall, the wave crashes at normal speed, but the aftermath of the wave is slowed down and sped up to give the audience a realistic feeling of being under a wave. The movie feels like “Endless Summer,” with ladies in the front seat (instead of males).
“Blue Crush” is void of any humor and feels overlong because the Anne Marie and her friends have zero chemistry (No “chemistry” sparks fly between Bosworth and Matthew Davis, too).
Kate Bosworth makes an indelible impression as the lead, Anne Marie. Her role isn’t deep at all and it doesn’t really give her a chance to show off any acting chops, but the movie isn’t meant to showcase acting. Bosworth looks great in her costume for the whole film (bikinis and a low-cut dress) and most males in the audience seemed pleased by her “performance”.
The rest of the cast is barely mentionable. Rodriguez has been reduced to sidekick roles after her amazing star turn in “Girlfight”. She is boring and totally miscast in “Blue Crush”; she never surfs and she looks very uncomfortable standing on the beaches. Sanoe Lake isn’t in the film very much, but most of the women in the film are used as eye candy (thus, her character is never developed whatsoever). Matthew Davis is boring as the football jock that loves Anne Marie and Faizon Love is plain obnoxious as one of the characteristically loud football players.
“Blue Crush’s” main problem is how stupid it becomes as the movie hits the halfway point. Surfing takes a backseat to Anne Marie’s relationship which is not what the audience cares to see. There are no scenes of the girl surfers triumphing over guy surfers, even though that’s what the movie seems to be preaching. All the males in the movie are blockheads who always have fighting on their mind; they also relentlessly mock the girl surfers and the women do nothing about it.
I’m not sure who to recommend the film too; the woman I saw it with didn’t enjoy it too much and most guys enjoyed the scenery and nothing else. Also, I never understood the title. It could be a surfing term, but there was no reference to it in the film. The film may as well have been called Blue Mush.
