Soul Sisters

Photo of Liv - taking a photo - of the girls

Gotta love the self-timer feature

Loved seeing Soul Surfer last night with the girls. It was the incredible true story of Bethany Hamilton, the young surfer girl from Hawaii who lost her arm in a shark attack. Soul Surfer was an entertaining show, and certainly what people who think movies are a godless art can get behind. It's a nice movie, in temperament if not always quality.

Bethany quit surfing but returned to competition, urged by her parents and a missionary stint aiding tsunami victims with worse problems. Carrie Underwood plays her youth worship minister, so Soul Surfer has more than the usual celebrity for a church flick.

It's a heart-tugging story, and the director never missed the chance to remind viewers of that. What Soul Surfer needs — what any story needs — is a richer sense of conflict, some chance that someone won't do the right thing.

I don't doubt that the real Bethany is as wholesome, happy and pious as Robb plays her. So is everyone else in Soul Surfer except an invented surfing rival, who is without any compassion for Bethany.

That would be a spoiler except Soul Surfer never intends to surprise. It's more technically polished than typical family films, especially the excellent digital "erasing" of Robb's left arm after the shark attack. I couldn't even tell in most of the scenes.

Soul Surfer is so clean that it squeaks, but sometimes that's exactly what I like to hear.