The Sea Beast review: Netflix enters its DreamWorks era

A list of unofficial textures and objects was created in the beginning of animated features. The most difficult were hair, water and human faces. Netflix’s new animated feature The Sea Beast shows how far the medium has come over the last few decades — but it simultaneously shows how uninspired big-budget animation can still look, sometimes moments after it delivers a visual wow.

This story is a tale about an ocean-set adventure that uses huge amounts of computer-animated waters with incredible skill. The water sparkles and churns as hunters ships scour the ocean for dangerous beasts. When sailors are sometimes dragged below to meet enormous, kaijuesque creatures, the murk makes for a serene, almost ethereal beauty. They are an amazing example of economic design. The creatures can be readable with cartoony expressions and imposing enough that they may cause a momentary panic in smaller audiences.

So, why are so many people in this overpopulated tale so bland to view? Maisie Brumble (Zaris Angel Hator) is by far the most distinguishing. This young orphan reads about brave beast-hunters, and hopes to join them on high seas. She’s a Black girl, which ensures that she doesn’t look exactly like every other plucky young animated hero. However, she is a generalist. Sea Beast Approach to human designs: Imitate Disney-style features like MoanaOr EncantoMake their eyes smaller. Jacob Holland (Karl Urban), the strapping sailor who becomes Maisie’s reluctant guardian when she stows away on his monster-hunting ship, isn’t a caricature of swashbuckling masculinity or a clever visual variation on a familiar theme. He’s just a generic-brand version of a Disney hero.

Image by Netflix

It’s understandable that a Disney influence would inform so much of The Sea Beast. Chris Williams, the film’s director is an experienced two-decade Walt Disney Animation Studios veteran who was responsible for directing several teams. Bolt, Big Hero 6Please see the following: Moana. He also worked as part of Disney’s story trust on many other projects. There’s a bit of MoanaHere’s a story about a mentor sailor and a boy with curly hair who learned from him. Pirates of the CaribbeanHere, rougher-hewn sailors will be challenged by soldiers of The Crown who wish to assume the task of monster hunting.

Strong overtones are found outside the Disney realm (though these may not be worlds apart). How to train your dragonThe pre-industrial community lived in fear of these fantastical creatures. Jacob and Maisie, who are now separated from their crew encounter a huge horned creature (possibly an amphibian given its dexterity in both water and land). Maisie calls it Red because of its bright, yellow skin. Though the creature isn’t as puppyish as Dragon’s Toothless, its response to the protagonists challenges some assumptions about these sea creatures, stemming from old-timey maps and Maisie’s supposedly true-life storybooks.

None of this is bad material for a children’s animated feature, and The Sea Beast Many breaks are available from recent animation trends. The dialogue is written and performed in a vernacular That reaches for a kind of offhand, English-accented poetry — the sea beasts, for example, are described as “nature’s darkest design.” Though the language doesn’t always hit the mark, it’s almost completely free of tinny sarcasm and faux-comic placeholders. (“Awkward!” “Well, that happened,” and the like.) Similarly, the grandeur of the movie’s strongest visuals is allowed to stand on its own, favoring painterly compositions of the ocean’s frightening vastness over busy, desperate-to-please antics.

Image by Netflix

Williams, his crew might have had the opportunity to be aLittleMore eager to please. At times, The Sea Beast The pace of the film is slow. After Maisie is introduced in her first brief scene, for example, she disappears from the movie for a stretch, slowing the film’s momentum. (My 6-year-old: “It seems like the hunters are the main characters, not the girl.”) Later on, the movie decelerates again for some speechifying, and in general greatly overestimates audience interest in Captain Crow (Jared Harris), a vaguely Ahab-like figure obsessed with getting revenge on the giant creature that has so long eluded him.

Captain Crow is an issue for the film: He isn’t interesting to look at, he isn’t much fun to be around, and he’s too human to function as a genuinely deranged villain. The movie’s nearly two-hour run time illustrates the pervasiveness of Netflix bloat more than the complexity of its themes, which are pretty familiar, in spite of the elevated language.

It’s difficult to tell whether Netflix’s feature animation will eventually develop its own identity. For now, there’s one more comparison that applies to The Sea BeastThis animation recalls DreamWorks’ early 2D films, with its vivid animation featuring mostly bland characters. ShrekIt has shifted away from hand-drawn cartoons. You might also like The Prince of EgyptOr Sinbad: Legend of the Seven SeasIt was before that. The Sea Beast ditches talking animals and funny sidekicks, but it can’t fully shake off its Disney influences. It’s a whole lot of well-animated beasts and water, with nowhere to flow.

The Sea BeastNetflix streaming available now