Rating: Country: USA Release Date: August 16, 2002

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“Blue Crush” is not a bad little movie. I won’t warn you to keep away from it, won’t scribble its name at the top of my “worst movies ever” list. It has its moments, truly. I’d be remiss not to mention the stunning photography and natural action sequences that made me wince more than once. Comic relief is provided in the form of Faizon Love as a teammate of our protagonist’s love interest. Realism is added in the form of Sanoe Lake as the protagonist’s uber-chick friend. There are plenty of elements of an excellent guilty pleasure movie here, but I left the theatre feeling less entertained than I would have thought I’d be.

Relative newcomer Kate Bosworth stars as Anne Marie Chadwick, a Hawaiian surf star wanna-be who sees a winning performance at the Pipe Masters’ competition as her ticket out of the life she leads. An absent mother (off with a boyfriend, we are told, in Vegas) has left her on her own to raise her helleborine younger sister. Her two best friends, roommates, and co-champions for Anne Marie’s dreams help with this task as the trio slave away at their job as maids as a luxury resort.

These are typical young women; traipsing about the islands, putting play before work, not fully seeing the consequences of their immature actions. The way in which they just hang out and the dialogue they use when they’re doing it is really very realistic. Maybe that was my problem with the movie.

I’m conditioned to want more sensationalism, bad dialogue, and the happiest of possible endings from my summer fluff films. The film bored me a bit in parts, and this could well be because life is boring in parts. It didn’t make the grade as a good movie, and wasn’t bad enough for me to dismiss it as a bad movie, so I’m confused as to how to file it in my head.

The romantic storyline, with Bosworth’s Anne Marie falling for a football player who’s vacationing at the resort where she works, is problematic because the story unfolds over a period of just one week, and the development of the relationship in that time is far more than is believable, cluttering up the stark credibility of the characters and film.

There is no stellar acting, here. Bosworth carries the movie well enough, Michelle Rodgriguez as one of her friends over-acts as we’ve grown to expect from her, Native Hawaiian Sanoe Lake, rounding out the trio of friends, isn’t given enough to do to make the viewer notice her unless they’re actively looking. Matthew Davis as the love interest is nice looking enough, but nothing spectacular in his part. Faizon Love, as one of Davis’s teammates provides much needed comic relief in this rather heavy handed film.

Director John Stockwell’s “crazy/beautiful” suffered a similar fate – advertised as a teen film, its dialogue and story were actually well enough crafted that they were undermined by the young audience to which it was catering. I would love to see what Stockwell could do behind the lens on a more mature film; he would likely surprise us all.

“Blue Crush” was not what I expected. It was not a bad film, but in good conscience I can’t really recommend it to anyone looking for the light-hearted fare its trailers promised us it would be.

Overall Grade: B-