Each week, Leisure Weekly is trying again on the largest motion pictures of the summer season of 2002. As audiences struggled to know the brand new post-9/11 world order, Hollywood discovered itself in a second of transition, with upcoming stars and soon-to-be-forever franchises taking part in alongside startling new visions and fading remnants of the outdated regular. Be a part of us for a rewatch of the primary true summer season of Hollywood’s unusual new millennium. Final week: Vin Diesel’s xtreme methods. This week: Leah Greenblatt and Darren Franich surf into Blue Crush. Subsequent week: Insomnia‘s Robin Williams returns to finish the summer season with One Hour Picture.
Everett Assortment
DARREN: I am a seaside boy, Leah, so I have been ready for Blue Crush all summer season. Solar, waves, swim trunks all day, a shack that is steps from the shoreline: What else does a summer season film want? Give this surfer odyssey further factors for further stakes. Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) is an Oahu prodigy simply days away from her Pipeline Masters debut. A great displaying there means the great life ceaselessly: sponsorships, journal covers, firms flying her wherever the crush is blue.
However her housekeeping resort gig cannot cowl the cellphone invoice, the electrical energy invoice, and the hire. Her mother’s a deadbeat on the mainland, which suggests Anne Marie is the one factor maintaining little sis Penny (Mika Boorem) out of hassle. She’s determining a complete romance factor with quarterback Matt (Matthew Davis), who may simply be utilizing her for a trip fling. Anne Marie is affected by nasty face-smashing-on-rock reminiscences of a near-drowning that derailed her teen surf profession. Her finest pal and roommate, Eden (Michelle Rodriguez), thinks she’s slacking on pipe prep. Her different finest pal and roommate, Lena (Sanoe Lake), is… chill.
Blue Crush appears to be like beautiful, as a result of Hawaii is beautiful. And director John Stockwell lets his digital camera linger out within the water, following surfers by and below gigantic swells. It is superior even when it is foolish, and it is foolish at any time when very some 2002 results staple Bosworth’s Nintendo-looking face onto another person’s physique. This was an issue with XXX, too, and this movie is a few form of generational sibling to Vin Diesel’s Xtreme spytacular: rather less No Concern, a bit extra Billabong. I imply it as an enormous praise after I say that Blue Crush looks like cinematic puka shells — a little bit of island taste on a well-known story, a dress-very-casual temper of no-rush cheerfulness.
At finest, it is a leisurely grasp. However Rodriguez brings a bit of fireside because the resident shaper who thinks cutie Matt is a distraction. “Cease being such a Barbie!” she chastises Anne Marie, when her budding famous person pal begins ditching the seaside for some bougie Little Black Costume-up. I can not resolve if the romance is forgivably lame or unforgivably lame. Davis was a tremendous Harvard heel in Legally Blonde, however the script borings him into a pleasant (and bland) man, with means too massive a task in Anne Marie’s journey to Pipeline. As a lifelong non-surfer, I assume there are some authenticity points right here — lower to Bosworth speaking about “the actual Hawaii” — although I do suppose real surf hero Keala Kennelly is fairly cool because the movie’s guiding mild. (Should admit bias right here: Kennelly later performed some form of massive wave prophet earth-mother in John from Cincinnati, a TV present I like helplessly.)
Did Blue Crush soar like a jet ski for you, Leah, or did it tumble into the reef? And the way wonderful is it that New Yorker author Susan Orlean impressed this film and Charlie Kaufman’s Adaptation in the identical yr?
LEAH: it is humorous, Orlean’s authentic story was actually about soul surfers, which is mainly only a time period for individuals who journey purely out of affection for the game, not money or prizes. Patrick Swayze’s Bodhi in Level Break can be a superb on-screen instance of that, and in the end Anne Marie too, although after all the Hollywood machine needed to do its factor with Lizzy Weiss’s screenplay, including a squishy romance plot and an enormous climactic competitors scene.
As somebody who went as Bodhi one yr for Halloween (wetsuit, zinc, shaman hair) and in addition will completely by no means get anyplace close to a Pipeline-size wave except it is to paddle round within the backwash, I assume you would say I am a soul surfer by default: no money, no prizes. However Crush, which appeared to be written off by quite a lot of critics as corny and business on the time, struck me extra like a feminine Lords of Dogtown after I was rewatching; there one thing scrappy and darkish and underbelly-ish lurking beneath all of the girl-power bromides and rudimentary CGI. The truth is it preceded Lords by a couple of years, however I do suppose the film would not get sufficient credit score for a way low-key radical it was, Legally Blonde man apart. It actually passes the Bechdel check by a mile, and the best way the motion scenes are shot actually captures how frankly terrifying it could really feel to be on the mercy of the ocean when it goes full washing-machine, like a sand flea in a centrifuge.
However the texture you point out, the puka-shell grasp, is what I believe I like finest about Blue Crush: the moments which are simply three finest associates rolling round in that slow-boat Chevy Impala, or being unhealthy maids on the luxurious lodge all of them work at (it is a Marriott on Oahu, not the Maui 4 Seasons, although the White Lotus vibes are sturdy). And the place else do these ladies should go? They’re younger, they’re poor, they do not have sponsors or coaches or perhaps a seen guardian determine, since Anne Marie’s mother effed off to Vegas together with her newest paramour. And naturally they’re in a sport whose most well-known feminine consultant in popular culture as much as that time was a ponytail named Gidget, 40 years earlier.
We must always most likely discuss Bosworth too, who could also be form of a Barbie bodily, however I believe can be fairly nice in her first actual lead, for a teenage actress who grew up leaping horses in Massachusetts and has to persuade us she will be able to rip kaiju-size waves like she’s swimming in her personal bathtub. That, and the pure chemistry of the solid, looks like an enormous cause why the Crush cult endures. However as a extra land-bound form of man, Darren, was that your takeaway?
Everett Assortment
DARREN: I like the Dogtown comparability, and I believe you are proper to match the movies’ scrappy edge. For all of the drama I listed up prime, Crush takes a meandering path to the ultimate act’s surf contest. Anne Marie and her crew bum round city, jockeying for waves, taking part in surf video video games, pooling their previous few pocket {dollars} for gas-station breakfasts. I like after they recommend $20 {dollars} because the hourly payment for surf classes — solely to search out out that the resort prices $150. A variety of the central worries have a slice-of-life plotlessness. Penny events a bit a lot. An area surf crew freaks out when Mike surfs their break. Anne Marie runs afoul of Mike’s pal’s preening wives and girlfriends. These are massive moments that could possibly be movie-length Points, however Blue Crush amiably cruises previous them.
I believe that is a savvy choice, really, leaving the correct amount of concentrate on the scenes out on the water, that are steadily superior. At one level, Eden jet skis off the island with Anne Marie in tow, searching out large waves to journey. The entire sequence is a stunner: the surfer tossed round underwater, Eden making an attempt to remain afloat earlier than all of them go tumbling. Stockwell has an actual present for bigscreen waterworks, and some years after this, he helmed Into the Blue, a really enjoyable and far nastier tan-beauties-at-the-beach journey. I dig his Blue interval, and there is one other coaching second I like, so massive and candy and ridiculous that it made the trailer: Anne Marie operating underwater, carrying a rock whereas she pulls Eden and Lena behind her. Friendship, dedication, uncooked athleticism, bikinis: How did this movie not make $200 million?
In fact, I am keen to confess that the second-act pressure (ought to I spend extra time with this scorching good man or ought to I apply my browsing extra?) was not precisely the form of high-stakes blockbuster storytelling that was dominating summers 20 years in the past. In that sense, Bosworth strikes me as being means luckier than most younger actors in the present day. She’s not promoting you on, like, the cruciality of preventing unhealthy wizards, or the necessity to defend the multiverse, or how vital it’s to stay as much as the legacy of some 50-year-old franchise. She’s only a cool child carrying quite a lot of weight on her shoulders, who likes room service however loves using out onto the ocean together with her ladies.
You are a music professional apart from being an everything-else professional, Leah, so I am curious: What did you consider the film’s soundtrack? It sounded to me like a extra curated mixture of very-of-the-moment anthems than any film we have talked about this summer season. Is it embarrassing to confess that I actually favored the P.O.D. montage? They have been, they have been, the youth of the nation!
LEAH: Dammit you simply made me google P.O.D., and people “youths” are all like 48 now. However oh, my God, sure to that to Crossfit-on-the-sea-floor scene, and to the height 2002 of this soundtrack: Doves, Zero 7, Lenny Kravitz, Nikka Costa, N.E.R.D. Sing to me of low-rise pants and Motorola Razrs! Inform me your AOL Messenger tales! The one bit that felt most like Quick & Livid or XXX, truthfully, was when Anne Marie reveals up at that home celebration to attempt to drag her delinquent child sister again to tween-dom and the youngsters are all skating half-pipes and grinding their golden pelvises collectively on the dance ground; I swear Vin Diesel and Eve might have been simply out of the body, getting down about “underground web sites.”
Blue Crush did not have these form of ambitions, clearly, or a minimum of not the finances; it price $25 million towards XXX‘s $88 million and obtained again $55 million on the field workplace, which made it the form of mid-range success that does not actually exist anymore. The center floor between Sundance and Thanos has just about vanished within the final twenty years, and I believe we are able to agree that is not a superb factor, for actors or for audiences. Feminine-centered tales after all have additionally traditionally struggled to search out studio assist, though ladies make up the slight majority of moviegoers, and most of the backline folks concerned in Crush have acknowledged the compromises they made simply to get the story on display, our Harvard heel most likely being one in every of them.
However I additionally love that when Davis’s Matt asks Anne Marie what she desires, none of her solutions are “a shiny Pipeline trophy, and a boyfriend to rescue me.” She’s mainly like, I would like cash to pay the payments and my mother to be a mother, and I would prefer to see a lady on the quilt of Surf journal. (“It will be nice if that lady have been me, however any lady would do.”) She additionally is aware of how you can deal with herself with the mean-girl Actual Housewives of the NFL, although: Drag them to hell.
In any case, I digress. This can be a lot of phrases, Darren, for a film that truthfully simply makes me completely satisfied. Ultimately we obtained a sort-of sequel, and higher CGI down the road; Bosworth even mentioned lately that she has her personal concepts for a followup. However slather me in Intercourse Wax and drop me right into a Nintendo-face barrel; there’ll solely ever be one true Blue.
Learn previous 2002 rewatches:
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gray/PUF5WGKWX5VRZQWCDMCTCDVU2U.jpg)