I would probably have never seen this movie had it not come in one of those mystery DVD bundles from The Record Exchange. I was expecting something of no consequence, girl power in bikinis, I got more then that.
In reading Roger Ebert's review of 'Blue Crush' I was pleased to have had two of the same thoughts as him. First the movie was much better then expected, the poster lead one to anticipate a silly surfing movie. Second it reminded me of 'Saturday Night Fever', both films are surprisingly gritty dramas (though one more so than the other) about blue collar young people seeking solice and escape in what might seem a silly hobby, be that surfing or disco dancing.
Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriquez and Sanoe Lake are old high school buddies, surfing companions, and a suraget family. They live with the Bosworth's character's younger sister Mika Boorem in a run down house on Oahu and make their living as maids at a posh resort. There is sad but mostly implied back story for the sister pair, the other two are mostly blank slates in that regard. Bosworth is in training to return at an amateur level to the world of competetive surfing, after a near drowning three years before. Distraction arrives in the form of Matthew Davis, a vacationing professional football player who takes a liking to Kate and might represent an alternative means of escape from a life of limited prospects.
To my surprise I liked and cared about the characters, and the story in which they appear is not as trite and cliche as it well could have been, and as the studio producing this "girl surfer movie" would likely have been content to let it be. Financially and critically this did pretty well, a $55 million box office off a $25 million budget and a relativley respectable 62% on Rotten Tomatoes. An unexpected pleasure, glad I chanced into it. ***
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