Share Your Shame: Blue Crush (2002)

I have to confess it took me a while to decide whether or not this movie could be considered a shameful part of my DVD collection; partly because it’s not that well known and partly because at one time or another, I would happily watch this movie three times in one week. Known for his Top Gun classic, John Stockwell does a pretty good job of directing this chick-flick, showing beautiful panoramic views of Hawaii’s beaches and keeping the action at a level that holds my interest for longer than half an hour.

Kate Bosworth leads the cast, playing Anne Marie, a surfing girl whose background is pebble-dashed with disaster from an estranged mother to a near-fatal surfing accident. Anne Marie’s main focus in the movie is to train up for a major surfing competition. Whilst battling her fears of getting back into the surfing game, The Vampire Diaries’ Matthew Davis steps in to make things a little more complicated and Anne Marie must battle her love for surfing with her interest in Davis and her responsibilities to look after her younger sister. In the end of course, the strong-headed surfer chick gets the guy and the glory for riding a “perfect wave” (although she doesn’t actually end up winning the competition).

Intentional or not, Stockwell highlights that surfing is a bit of an awesome sport and it certainly peaked my interest in it, which is why I bought the movie and tried surfing myself. The reason why I class it as a shameful movie is because the plotline is a bit, well, boring; a girl with a troubled past must overcome her fears and win the competition whilst trying to keep back lover boy and annoying sister (extreme eye-rolling here). In fact the only reason I think this movie is any good is because of the fact that it’s a movie about surfing – film the same plot with golf and it becomes a full on snooze fest.

Ultimately, the reason this movie remains on my shelf and not on some charity shop self is because if I’m feeling a bit down or out of inspirational spirit, or if it’s been raining for about a week and I want to feel like I’m on holiday, it’s a good one to watch. When I showed the film to my boyfriend however, the look on his face made this a sure fire shameful DVD for me – not even women clad in barely-there bikinis is enough to make a guy watch this blatantly obvious movie about girl power and their ability to ride a wave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfDV-aLD9d4

Nichola Johnson