Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Micransix Crappy film

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

James Hitchcock "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).

Thanos Karagioras "Blue Crush" is a movie which has to do with a girl who tries to get on with her live and prepare herself for the Pipe Masters surf competition, the biggest competition of surf. She tries to get over some other things that happened in her life and she wants to fulfill her dream of becoming number one in surf and win the Pipe Masters surf competition.I think that "Blue Crush" is a movie with which you can spend your time and nothing more than that. Although I liked the plot of this movie and it reminded me another movie about surfing the "Soul Surfer" (based on the true story of Bethany Hamilton) which I liked more than this.Finally I believe that with this movie you can understand how a surfer feels and you can also understand how difficult is surfing.

dilloncw02 When viewing a movie centered on the sport of surfing, some may feel like they're on the outside looking in. But Blue Crush, a "summer box office guilty pleasure" according to the New York Times, directed by John Stockwell, does in an incredible job of displaying the surf world while drawing in the average American by employing the typical Hollywood love story. Most Americans think of the sport of surfing as a thing for Californians or Hawaiians and synonymize it with the words "hang ten," "righteous," and "gnarly." But in Blue Crush, Stockwell is able to connect the inner workings of one of the most dangerous sports in the world to the story of just a typical local Hawaiian girl aiming for her shot in one of the most prestigious big wave surf completions in the world.Produced by Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, Blue Crush stars some well-known actors in Hollywood like Kate Bosworth, Matthew Davis and Michelle Rodriguez but also adds an actress who can truly relate to the world of surfing in Sanoe Lake, an ex pro surfer and face of billabong. Kate Bosworth who stars as Anne Marie Chadwick, lives with friends and fellow surfers Eden (Michelle Rodriguez) and Lena (Sanoe Lake) and is trying to prove to her other local friends and herself why and how she earned her wild card admission into the Billabong Pipe Masters Competition. While attempting to balance a job as a hotel maid, her dreams and raising her younger sister, Anne Marie struggles to find who she is and how she is going to be able to continue the current lifestyle she is living. While on the job, she falls for pro football player Matt Tollman (Matthew Davis) and begins to lose sight of the competition she has worked so hard for but soon realizes she is out of her element and doesn't know what to do. She eventually figures out a way to balance all of the things in her life and how to be herself while maintaining a relationship with her friends, sister and boyfriend and manages to achieve success while competing in the Pipe Masters. The key to making this movie such a success was the outstanding cinematography. Stockwell and Universal Pictures display masterful camera work anytime someone was on a surfboard, which was a lot. Shooting all different angles of the waves that the stunt doubles surfed on, from the views inside the pipe of the waves to even getting beautiful shots of the undertow and coral reefs, Stockwell displayed his brilliance by understanding the key components of what drive the very sport of surfing. On top of magnificent camera work, the story line is something so original and specific in the sense that it is a movie based around surfing and the surf lifestyle, yet so relatable to the average person who doesn't know much about surfing at all. Granted this movie was shot in Hawaii and is about the sport of surfing, Blue Crush is a great all around movie that is not just a typical summer flick. It's certainly a movie for people who enjoy surfing or are surfing enthusiasts, but it is also a movie for the general population as it lures them with an exotic landscape and puts a twist in the typical Hollywood love story of romance, heartbreak and fairytale ending. I, being someone who has been to every site where this movie was shot, recommend this movie to all based upon the legitimacy it contains about the lifestyle of surfing and the entertainment and drama it provides to keep the movie goer hooked throughout the entire motion picture. It may not have won an Oscar, but it is definitely an excellent and intriguing motion picture that shows the "behind the scenes" view into the world of surfing while still being entertaining.

wes-connors At Hawaii's North Shore, athletically attractive Kate Bosworth (as Anne Marie Chadwick) trains for the Pipeline, and hangs with bikini-clad pals Michelle Rodriguez (as Eden) and Sanoe Lake (as Lena). They also work as local hotel maids, where Ms. Bosworth hooks up with football hunk Matthew Davis (as Matt Tollman), after showing his messy teammate how to dispose of a condom. This causes some friction with the islanders. Boswell also worries about little sister Mika Boorem (as Penny) who is mixing it up with an older crowd. John Stockwell's "Blue Crush" combines the sports surfing and girl-watching, but the story lacks a good amount of imagination.**** Blue Crush (8/8/02) John Stockwell ~ Kate Bosworth, Matthew Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Mika Boorem