Another penguin sets out to prove himself in 'Surf's Up'

The premise sounds odd to say the least: an animated film version of an extreme sports documentary by way of reality TV. You've got the bobbing camera, the direct-address interviews, the offhanded glances of characters wary of the video surveillance of private moments. It just happens to be entirely computer animated. Oh, yes, and it's about surfing penguins and various other critters.

The underdog tale follows surf-mad loner Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf) from his Antarctic village (where his obsession is tolerated at best) to a tropical island invitational.

His cockiness earns him a swift humiliation from the swaggering bully of a reigning champion, and he gets a lesson in both humility and surf aesthetics from a hippie burnout hermit-turned-Zen-mentor (Jeff Bridges). Imagine The Dude from "The Big Lebowski" as a hang-ten sensei.

There's a familiar lesson of sportsmanship and the joy of sport beyond competition beneath the surf-cam footage and "spontaneous" scenes of comic revelation, enlivened largely by the buoyant sense of humor and the filmmakers' fun with the mock-doc conventions. For more comic relief, Jon Heder voices the obliviously easygoing Chicken Joe as the Jeff Spicoli of poultry surf bums.

The film's greatest triumph, at least on a technical level, is the amazing texture of the water, which has never looked so dramatic or convincing in an animated film. "Surf's Up" is filled with extraordinary scenes of massive walls of water, magnificent curls, crashing waves and lapping surf, creating the greatest surf spectacle never filmed. This ride doesn't take you anywhere new, but the moves are cool and the waves are impressive.