I know I’ve said it before, but I’m a sucker for surf movies, and even a by-the-numbers sports drama like Blue Crush offers enough to satisfy this particular craving.
Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is a promising young surfer whose career stalled a few years back when she almost drowned. Now entered in the Pipeline, one of Hawaii’s most dangerous surf contests, Anne Marie, with the help of best friends Eden (Michelle Rodriguez) and Lena (Sanoe Lake), is in training for the big event.
But with an absentee mother, the would-be surfer finds herself caretaker of a troublesome younger sister (Mika Boorem), and a whirlwind romance with NFL quarterback Matt Tollman (Matthew Davis) has Anne Marie rethinking her priorities.
It’s a standard Hollywood story (with an ending that’s even more so), but director John Stockwell manages to capture the energy and excitement of big-wave surfing, and the hip-hop soundtrack only adds to the intensity of it all (an early montage, set to Blestenation’s update of Bananarama’s "Cruel Summer", is especially memorable).
It may not be unique, but Blue Crush hit the spot, and has me jonesing for summer to return!
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
