‘Soul Surfer’ tells tale of girl who overcomes challenge after
shark attack
Sometimes a good base of actors does not a good movie make.
Three of the leads in
”
Soul Surfer
”
are actors that usually do a decent job on screen. AnnaSophia
Robb has been in a lot of second-rate fare such as
”
Jumper
”
and
”
an American Girl Holiday.
”
But she showed her depth in
”
Bridge to Terabithia
”
in the heart-wrenching telling of the book by the same name. She
embodied Leslie Burke, a young girl who moves to a rural town and
befriends a boy her age who doesn’t quite fit in. The book was
something I read, and Robb was just as I imagined the character to
be.
‘Soul Surfer’ tells tale of girl who overcomes challenge after shark attack
Sometimes a good base of actors does not a good movie make. Three of the leads in “Soul Surfer” are actors that usually do a decent job on screen. AnnaSophia Robb has been in a lot of second-rate fare such as “Jumper” and “an American Girl Holiday.” But she showed her depth in “Bridge to Terabithia” in the heart-wrenching telling of the book by the same name. She embodied Leslie Burke, a young girl who moves to a rural town and befriends a boy her age who doesn’t quite fit in. The book was something I read, and Robb was just as I imagined the character to be.
Some of the other lead characters are played by Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt. Both have played a lot of different roles in their lives, and they are especially good at playing characters who come up against a life-altering challenge.
But something about the acting in “Soul Surfer” just didn’t add up. It felt a little too much like a Hallmark or Lifetime movie. That is to say, the dialogue was weak and the acting was stilted. It just didn’t seem like something that should be on the big screen. The actors may not be to blame for it.
The movie has more than a dozen writing credits to it, including Bethany Hamilton, who is the center of the story and wrote a book about her experience. But there are also the writers who helped her with the book, writers who adapted it for a screen story, and then those who eventually turned it into a screenplay. That might have been a few too many hands in the mix.
For anyone who doesn’t know the story of Bethany Hamilton, she was a Hawaiian surfer girl who was set to take all the competitions by storm. She spent her mornings surfing on the North Shore and was homeschooled to give her plenty of time in the water. She survived a brutal shark attack in which she lost an arm. But instead of giving up her dream, Hamilton faced her fears and went back into the water.
The movie spends a large chunk of time establishing what Hamilton’s (AnnaSophia Robb) life is like before it gets into the business of her life after her injury. We see her as a young girl, surfing with her family and her best friend. Her best friend Alana Blanchard (Lorraine Nicholson) is a good surfer, too. In fact, when the pair comes in one-two at a competition, with Hamilton in first place, they are offered sponsorship by Rip Curl. They put the training into overdrive.
Hamilton’s life is all about surfing. Her parents were devoted surfers who raised her and her two older brothers Timmy (Chris Brochu) and Noah (Ross Thomas) as close to the ocean as they could get. Parents Cheri (Helen Hunt) and Tom (Dennis Quaid) get the draw of the ocean for their daughter, and they support her dream of becoming a professional surfer.
Things are going great for Hamilton. The only drama in her life is her feeling torn between devoting more time to training and spending time with her church youth group. The family is religious, and Hamilton had planned to volunteer on a trip to Mexico with her youth group before she got her sponsorship from Rip Curl. It is the only bit of conflict before her accident.
In fact, most of the early scenes are just of Hamilton in the water, with various other surfers. She makes comments like, “Isn’t it so awesome we get to be here everyday?” It is comments like that that make the movie seem amateurish.
The main drama comes in when Hamilton is attacked while out surfing with Alana and Alana’s father. The girl remains calm throughout the rescue and manages to survive the attack despite losing 60 percent of her blood. When she awakens in the hospital, her first question for the doctor (Craig T. Nelson) is when she can get back in the water. Hamilton is overly optimistic about her future and at first never sees a life without surfing as an option. But once she gets home, she seems to realize that there are some limitations to having one arm.
She can’t slice fruit or vegetables on her own. She can’t pull her hair back into a hair tie. She struggles to dress herself. But she is determined to get back on a surfboard as soon as the stitches come out. She manages to get up on her board, though, she has to relearn how to balance herself. She stays strong in front of her family.
The only time she shows her doubt about her future is when she visits with Sarah Hill (Carrie Underwood,) the youth minister from her church. With Sarah she says she isn’t sure what God’s plan is for her now. But the movie is about Hamilton’s triumph over her challenge, of course, so things work out in the end. Country singer Underwood and much of the supporting cast were weak actors.
