Soul Surfer

Soul Surfer (2011) – on rental. The story of this not-too-mainstream film goes like this. Bethany Hamilton is a 13 year old girl living in Kauai. She has two brothers, loving parents, and is in a Christian family who loves surfing. However, on a morning surf with friends in October 2003 however, she loses her entire arm when she’s attacked by a tiger shark. Undeterred, she remains guided by her faith and with witnessing of others suffering, she goes on a journey of emotional and physical recovery to pursue her dream of competitive surfing and charity work.

Sounds corny and something straight out of a film adapted out of a Nicholas Sparks book? Nope. The story’s real. The incident did happen, and the character is very real. The story is both tragic but also inspirational, with the real 21 year old Bethany Hamilton today competitively surfing and winning trophies despite her disability. I learned of the real story while casually browsing for sports news, and upon finding out that a film was being made about her story, queued up the DVD rental as soon as it was released.

The key role of Bethany is played by AnnaSophia Robb, an actress I’ve named on our blog here before as one of the best young actresses to watch; her parents Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt, and the rest of the cast mostly non-recognizables, excepting Craig T. Nelson as the town’s doctor, and American country singer, Carrie Underwood in the odd role of a church worker. The film was made on location in Hawaii, and apart from what looks like a neighboring set dressed up to replace a Thai location depicting the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, looks pretty authentic. The surfing is easy to follow, and as I understand it, done with minimal CG enhancements.

The story is pretty well-documented in news that viewers who have an inclination to find out more only need to do a quick Google search. Nonetheless, it’s not an easy film to watch. Every scene where you see Robb on-screen without her arm (done through CG) and struggling to re-learn everything that she once took for granted, is heart-rendering. Much of this is due to Robb amazing performance. She’s easily likable as a young growing up girl who loves her hobby, and when tragedy strikes, presents real emotions as she struggles to reconcile her loss with her faith. Bit of snippet: the real Bethany Hamilton when asked who she’d like to play her in this film, she named Robb.

One thing though is that Hollywood routinely has the habit of turning into cheese inspirational stories like this, and Soul Surfer comes dangerously close to the same failings. The package that includes camera angles, dialog and music, feels pretty manipulative to elicit tears from you. Similarly too, the film poses very tough questions like how can God allow for such tragedies to happen, but doesn’t do resolve it well for the most part. There’s a weak attempt to provide some sort of answer from Underwood’s church worker character but sorry, she doesn’t act very well; and it’s only in the film’s closing scene is there an answer of sorts coming out from Bethany herself.

If this film doesn’t make shark fin lovers want to go out and eat a pot of shark’s fin soup, nothing else will (to be fair though, the real Bethany Hamilton has nothing against sharks, and in fact thinks they are great creatures – see DVD supplements). Outside that, the film is on a bit of a fine edge. The film passes or fails based on AnnaSophia Robb’s performance, and thankfully she does not disappoint. Deducted a star for the cheese injected, but on the overall, worth an easy watch.