THE SEA BEAST (2022)

THE SEA BEAST (2022)

Tagline: Nope.

(Animation, Adventure, Don’t Go In The Ocean) [PG]

There was a time when children dreaded the night, for the sleeping hours brought visions of horror. The dark times, when those terrible sea beasts would ravage our shores, and no ship was safe on the sea.

In this one, we are taken back to a time when giant sea beasts would have ruled the ocean if it were not for sea-faring monster hunters that took down any beast they came across. The most famous hero of the time was Jacob Holland. As it turns out he’s got a huge fan named Maisie Brumble who decides to sneak aboard his ship. After immediately winning over the captain, she gets to stay but after being marooned on an island, Jacob and Maisie discover there may be more to some of the sea beasts than they ever imagined. 

If you just read that and thought, “so this is HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON” on water. You would be correct. Only this is the overly long super boring almost humorless version of that. I hate to tip my hand this early even in a short review, but there just isn’t much going on in very long sections of this movie. In fact, it isn’t until about 50 minutes in, that it finally gets interesting. Then we go back into about a half-hour lull before the predictable and unimpressive final act. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is not nearly the trash that LIGHTYEAR was and we do at least get some likable characters. Jacob is stubborn but malleable, and Maisie is headstrong but full of wonder. Maisie is actually a pretty incredible character, but it’s not enough to save the design issues and overall low level of interesting things going on in this movie. 

So what went right? Karl Urban (THOR: RAGNAROK) is good in almost everything except for THE BOYS where all he does is repeat a certain C word about a million times per episode. He is great in this voicing Jacob Holland. Jared Harris is good in this voicing Captain Crow, but the real stand out for the voice cast is Zaris-Angel Hator who voices Maisie. She does a great job in this. As it turns out both Hator and Harris are in MORBIUS. Also, no one can tell me that the last part of Zaris’s name “Angel Hator” wasn’t a bit unfortunate. 

I have seen a lot of praise for this movie design-wise, but I cannot stand the design for “Red”. It looks like someone saw “HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON” and just stole the design from “Toothless”. Having said that, the rest of this thing is pretty fantastic looking and the designs for the other two main “sea beasts”, “The Purple Crustacean” and “Prickleback” are imaginative and well thought out. It does look like a good amount of effort was put into this movie, but cutting at least 45 minutes off the run time would have kept my interest a lot more. 

I think most “shiny object” kids are going to be fine with this, but anyone watching it for a decent story is probably going to realize it’s pretty stale and it also isn’t much of a comedy. Unfortunately for 2022, we just haven't gotten the “wow” factor with any 1 animated movie. This is better than PAWS OF FURY: THE LEGEND OF HANK, so at least that’s something. 

THE SEA BEAST gets a 3 out of 7. Sorry, that’s the best I can do. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF NETFLIX ANIMATION AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.