Soul Surfer Reviews

It’s another movie that, for some rather obscure reasons, I really wanted to watch for quite some time. I guess I wanted to check it out mostly because I have a weak spot for AnnaSophia Robb and because it seemed to have a rather decent reputation. Anyway, to be honest, I was  eventually rather disappointed by the damned thing after all. First of all, everything before the shark attack was just so cheesy. Indeed, it made Hawaii look like some kind of Barbieland where everybody looked like some catalog model and nobody had an ounce of personality. The rather heavy-handed religious message didn’t help either. Then, there was the actual shark attack which happened in a split second so it felt rather anti-climatic. On the other hand, it might have been the most realistic scene since Bethany Hamilton herself has reported that everyone involved was actually calm during the incident. Afterwards, the whole thing finally did take off and became slightly better but only slightly, I’m afraid. I mean, it was actually a really strong story with a lot of potential but it was rather poorly developed and it doesn’t surprise me that a whopping 10 persons were involved in the writing process. At least, the lovely AnnaSophia Robb gave a solid performance and Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt were not bad either but the rest of the cast was rather weak though. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it is still a strong story and I think it is worth a look but there is no doubt that it could have been so much better.