For $100, what do you get when you combine a true story of a maimed surfer with the worst script imaginable and a director with absolutely no awareness of how to work with actors? The answer:Soul Surfer. In the long, proud tradition of true story filmmaking, audiences have seen the great heights and dangerous depths humanity and individuals have experienced across time and place. The film version of a true story of a homeschooled surfer from the most perfect blonde-haired, blue-eyed family, who unfortunately meets the criteria for her stereotype, who goes from injury to victory falls well short of a truly affective tale. In the end, one feels glad Bethany Hamilton living in sunny Hawaii had the strength and perseverance to overcome her tragic injury but feels a movie is just plain unnecessary.
Bethany Hamilton (Annasophia Robb) is as beach-blonde as they get, living the easiest life imaginable in Hawaii. Homeschooled in the loosest sense of the word, she spends most of her days catching waves and training to go Pro. Born of surf parents (Helen Hunt and Dennis Quaid, who really don’t deserve to be treated this way), Bethany heads out surfing one perfectly pleasant morning with her friend and her friend’s brother and father (Kevin Sorbo, utterly convincing as theHercules of surfing and the best thing about the film purely for nostalgic reasons). Low and behold, a not-so perfectly pleasant shark, courtesy of CGI, comes in for a nibble and makes off with Bethany’s arm. The remainder of the film is devoted to her inspirational recovery against all odds and ultimate victory. Sound familiar? It’s been done.
Soul Surfer must have been a vacation for everyone involved; a paid salary, time in Hawaii, and the smallest modicum of acting required. Working off a true story and an autobiography to boot, the screenstory lists seven writers and the screenplay credits four. How a project with such disastrously poor dialogue required so many wordsmiths is beyond comprehension. Sean McNamara appears in both, and went on to direct some truly awful performances. Why Helen Hunt especially saw this as a comeback film is elusive. Every pre-shark scene involves a line relishing how wonderful life is and how lucky Bethany and her friends are to live in the utopia of all utopias. Just when the glee is reaching the point of vomit-inducing nausea, the half-second long, distorted shot of the shark arrives and the movie has five exciting minutes of reaction shots and tears. What an inconvenience it must have been for everyone to put in one day of non-dialogue acting amidst their relaxation. Then the dialogue starts up again and it occurs to you that there is still over an hour of feel-good family schlock left.
Carrie Underwood makes her feature debut, and with nothing left worth writing about concerning the film, why not take a quick moment to share how truly awful an actress she is? Playing the whacked out religious blonde who looks…just like everyone else in the movie, she can’t help but sing her Bible-thumping songs with the ridiculously out-of-place pop star tone she must not be able to shake off. Besides showing that she has no musical range outside of pop, and can’t see that her character sure would benefit from something different, like acting, she blankly stares through her lines and struggles to raise her inflection on questions, tilting her head with the inquisitive angle of a Barbie. Stick to music.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
Among a modest selection of deleted scenes, all deservedly removed from the final edit, there are three behind the scenes featurettes. The first is your standard making-of, while the second dives in deeper waters, examining the film’s surfing scenes alone. This one is well worth watching, for two specific reasons: the director’s insistence to avoid any type of CGI, capturing real surfing with his real actors; which leads into the second, Helen Hunt is one hell of a surfer. She surfed before the film and trained harder to become the sleek, confident master of the waves the movie presents. The final featurette is devoted to AnnaSophia’s work with the actual Bethany Hamilton to capture her character. Beyond these, there is a documentary and interview with Bethany Hamilton herself about surfing. All in all, a decent selection.
"Soul Surfer" is on sale August 2, 2011 and is rated PG. Biopic, Drama. Written and directed by Sean McNamara. Starring AnnaSophia Robb, Carrie Underwood, Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt, Kevin Sorbo.
