Surf's Up

It's not the funniest animated movie you've ever seen -- most of the jokes are amusing, rather than laugh-out-loud -- but it does the job.

Sometimes the humor just seems to be "it's penguins doing human things -- get it?"

But it's fast-moving, colorful, and the voice cast is good. (Fortunately, they didn't give Jon Heder too much to do, so he wasn't out of his depth.)

Shia LeBeouf was very good (esp. considering how young he is). Several of us thought it was Bruce Willis doing the character of Cody. Snappy and smart. I liked Mario Cantone as the snarky sandpiper.

The animation is so deft you can actually see subtle emotions play over the faces of these birds. The waves sometimes look real, not animation.

There's a lot of stuff about surfing. Seemed like one of those old surfing documentaries sometimes. I didn't know if the kids could follow all that -- but the 3 little girls sitting in front of me pronounced the movie "fantastic" afterwards, so I guess it did its job.