Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on June 2012

It’s hard to criticize a movie about a young Hawaiian girl who gets her arm chomped off by a shark yet battles her way back into competitive surfing, but I feel obliged to try. The filmmakers trivialize Bethany Hamilton’s inspiring story by shoehorning it into the bland old sports-underdog formula. It’s so desperately upbeat that we never see the dark side, and there had to be a dark(er) side. The melodrama’s sappy, the dialog’s dopey, and the barefaced Christian proselytizing’s fairly constant. Bethany’s story deserves better. Bright spot: the surfing footage is fabulous. (106 min)