Blue Crush

The 40 or so minutes this newfangled surf-girls movie spends in the water is a cinematic blast of pipe-riding pleasure. Post-feminist and almost the antithesis of a Gidget flick, Blue Crush has a bit more going for it than just bikini babes and bitchin' waves, but its plot is ankle deep at best--an amalgam of sports and summer love clichés that act as an undertow, dragging the film into the genre past it's trying to leave behind. Accessible, freckle-nosed blonde knockout Kate Bosworth (The Horse Whisperer) stars as a gifted, Hawaii-raised board bunny with an ambition for surfing fame and fortune. But a dysfunctional home life and haunting memories of a near-death wipeout are holding her back. Director John Stockwell--who turned last year's potentially trite teen romance crazy/beautiful into something honest and exceptional--does more with the script than you'd expect and makes the most of the movie's whitecaps with invigorating surfing cinematography. But there's still that screen-hogging generic romance with the dime-a-dozen pretty boy, Matthew Davis (Legally Blonde), here badly miscast as an NFL quarterback in Hawaii for a game. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include commentaries by director John Stockwell and by costars Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake; the 15-minute “Three Friends, One Passion” making-of featurette, 19-minutes worth of deleted scenes with optional commentary, the four-minute behind-the-scenes featurette “Filming Blue Crush,” a pair of two-minute segments--“The Female Surfing Revolution” and “Wipeout!” montage, two three-minute segments on “Riding the Waves” (girls vs. guys clips), a two-minute segment on skateboarding, the five-minute featurette “Surf Fashion” on relevant clothing, the text guide to “The World of Surfing” (which contains information on everything from surf terminology to seasonal hotspots), the Lenny Kravitz music video “If I Could Fall in Love,” production notes, cast/filmmaker bios, a trailer, a promo, and DVD-ROM features. Bottom line: all in all a totally tubular extras package for an action-packed if narratively run of the mill film.] (R. Blackwelder)