PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 7, 2022 13:43:48 GMT -5
 The fact that a film as exciting, charming and very nicely-animated as The Sea Beast ended up as a Netflix film instead of a wide theatrical release this past summer is a travesty in and of itself. I confess I'd meant to watch it a lot sooner, but like with most Netflix films, their seeming lack of interest in promoting their own material more aggressively caused this to fall in priority on my To Watch list a bit, which I really regret now, because this is one of the biggest and most pleasant surprises of the year so far. This film is a true-and-blue seafaring action-adventure swashbuckler, with all the energetic instincts of a lot of its live-action brethren, as well as charming main characters that you legitimately want to follow and root for on this journey. If there's any past animated film that The Sea Beast is reminiscent of, it's How To Train Your Dragon. It's clear to see where this film takes its inspiration from in terms of that one -- from the legitimately thrilling action sequences (seriously, the film's first major one is genuinely exciting, complimented by vibrant and effective animation) to the characters who are well-rendered and treated with legitimate care and emotion instead of just being pulled from the Stock Kid Movie Character Rolodex. Even if the film does fall back on some of the typical narrative trappings of stories like this, it always knows how to emphasize its best qualities -- the animation, core character relationships and the action -- so that it all comes together as a very tasty stew of the right ingredients. The central relationship between Jacob (Karl Urban) and Maisie (Zaris-Angel Hator) is genuinely charming and the film knows exactly how to play it without leaning too much into anything eyeroll-worthy, if at all. Both characters compliment each other nicely and it's genuinely endearing seeing the two interact. But one of the best things about The Sea Beast is the fact that its message is ultimately an affirming and even uplifting one, as it pretty deftly comments on the need for a more positive and united society without coming off as preachy at all. The film comes from Chris Williams, who previously helmed Disney animations such as Bolt and Big Hero 6 and here with The Sea Beast, he shows off the most impressive display of his talents. The Sea Beast is beautifully animated, told with precision and excitement and emotion and features downright thrilling action sequences that were more than worthy of a big screen experience (damn you, Netflix). It plays out as a sort of mix of How To Train Your Dragon and Pirates of the Caribbean, and those who know me well enough know that combination was tailor-made for me. We need more animated movies like this.
***1/2 /****
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Oct 8, 2022 12:52:40 GMT -5
The kid really enjoys parts of this. She hasn't watched it all the way through as she's easily distracted but I've seen the beginning about 400 times and it looks like a fun time.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 10, 2022 13:31:19 GMT -5
The kid really enjoys parts of this. She hasn't watched it all the way through as she's easily distracted but I've seen the beginning about 400 times and it looks like a fun time. You could sneak in a watch of the whole thing when she's napping? |
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Doomsday
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Post by Doomsday on Oct 10, 2022 14:17:21 GMT -5
She's almost 5. She doesn't nap. The entire day is a hurricane. All day. Every day.
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PhantomKnight
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Post by PhantomKnight on Oct 10, 2022 14:24:30 GMT -5
She's almost 5. She doesn't nap. The entire day is a hurricane. All day. Every day. Okay, clearly you need the nap, then. |
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Dracula
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Post by Dracula on Dec 7, 2022 11:03:40 GMT -5
The Sea Beast(11/30/2022)
The Sea Beast is not Netflix’s first animated film by any means but it is their first animated feature that wasn’t a co-production of any kind with another established animation company (though it had some for-hire assist from Sony Pictures Imageworks, which is more of an effects company than an animation studio) and it’s gotten solid critical marks but a lot of its buzz has been kind of under the radar. The film is a very mainstream work of CGI animation for better or worse and is clearly trying to compete with the likes of Disney and Dreamworks and does a serviceable job of keeping up with the joneses. The film is kind of a fantasy story, but one set on the high seas in some approximation of the 17th or 18th century but in a world where sea monsters are real and legion and there are ships that are dedicated to hunting them. That sea beast action is pretty well rendered and feels like a sort of marine take on what the How to Train Your Dragon movies did with flying reptiles, though you can see some tradeoffs in that they did need to skimp a bit on the animation budget for some other things. Namely I think some of the faces are a bit off and they’re a bit inconsistent about whether they want to do realistic or caricatured faces and character models. The film’s story does not really break the mold at all, it’s sort of your typical child wish fulfilment story about a kid who goes on an adventure and is right about everything and it has an ending with a rather… naively optimistic… outlook on how much societal change can be accomplished through airing facts in a public forum. I don’t know, Netflix going into making one of these movies right now kind of reminds me Dreamworks trying to establish themselves as an animation powerhouse early on by making Disney Renaissance-esque stuff like The Road to El Dorado and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas right as the public was already kind of getting sick of that stuff from Disney. But a lot of those movies look better removed from that context and people looking for an animated adventure movie could do a lot worse than this.
*** out of Five
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