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Fri 08 Aug 2007Surf's UpHaving endured a plague of talking pigs, ferrets, cows, giraffes and - most conspicuously - penguins over the past decade or so, even the most undiscerning fan of computer-animated features will applaud the makers of Surf's Upfor trying something a little different.The picture does not, it is true, showcase any individual innovations. Christopher Guest has been making mockumentaries for aeons. The notion of putting naturalistic (improvised?) dialogue into the mouths of anthropomorphic livestock has been around since Aardman Animation launched Creature Comforts. And the film's elegiac tribute to an earlier era of surfing has been lifted wholesale from Stacy Peralta's great documentary Riding Giants.