Happy Fish - Hai-Alarm und frische Fische

I have seen this film with my brother back in 2006, when I was 10 and he was 6. My dad brought this film from a video-club, not even looking what it is (typical for him, he just asks "Is this a film for kids?" and if it is, he takes it). When I saw the cover, I knew it will be a bad film, but I put it in and watched it anyway.

The film is about a fish named Pi. He lives in Boston with his parents, who are starting to think should they leave Boston and go to a tropical reef, where Pi would be safe. Both of them are caught in a fishing net, and Pi is saved by some porpoises. They bring him to the tropical reef his parents were talking about.

Next, he sees Cordelia, a pink female fish, being taken photos of by some divers. Pi immediately falls in love with her. There are some fish around her, and among them he finds his cousin, Dylan. There, he learns about the inhabitants of the reef. He learns about "flatbottom" (the open ocean), and that all the fish avoid it, because fishing isn't forbidden there, and there are numerous fishing nets.

Soon after, a bully shark Troy (oh, how original name) appears on the scene, with his two pals, a barracuda and an eel. Troy kisses Cordelia, and Pi unsuccessfully tries to stop him and save Cordelia. The eel and the barracuda attack Dylan.

Pi learns that Troy is a true nightmare for the inhabitants of the reef, and that nobody has enough courage to stop him. He meets a sea turtle, Nerrisa, who teaches him some kind of martial arts and shows him some places where Troy could get stuck or worse, so Pi could defeat him.

As the day of the fight between Troy and Pi gets closer, Cordelia begs Pi to not do that, because Troy could kill him. In the meantime, Troy is trying to find a pearl and give it to Cordelia. He promised he'll find the most beautiful pearl in the ocean for her (in the film, when a fish gives a pearl to another one, it means the first fish wants to marry the other one). He gets angry and sends his pals to find one, and they see Nerissa's dark-blue pearl and try to steal it, unsuccessfully. Fearing of Troy's punishment, they steal the pink pearl of Dylan's mother.

The day of the fight comes. Troy appears on the reef and starts singing rimes, like he's the best, the strongest and so on. Pi stops him and provokes him. Troy gets angry and chases him to kill him. Pi quickly swims through narrow passages, and Troy gets stuck, but is saved by the divers from the beginning of the movie.

Pi tries out another trap: a sea current filled with jellyfish. Troy bashes into one and faints. He falls on the sea floor. Pi comes to him to claim his victory, but Troy suddenly awakens and kicks him. The other inhabitant of the reef, when they see what happened, rush in to help Pi. Some of them attack Troy, and the others help Pi.

Pi gets better and lures Troy into a fishing net. As the net is going to the surface and the only way out is getting narrower and narrower, Pi quickly swims to the top and jumps out of it. Troy tries to do the same, but is to big to get through. He cannot get out, and he gets pulled out of the water.

Everybody celebrates the victory. Dylan manages to defeat his provokers, Troy's two pals, and takes the pearl they have stolen. Nerissa gifts his blue pearl to Pi, and he gives it to Cordelia. She accepts him. Even the eel and the barracuda start celebrating and find their place among the others.

OK, these are thing that I noticed in the film:

* Firstly, I'm not sure that in Boston there are so colourful fish as Pi (he's orange).

* Next, the dolphins (porpoises) that saved him and brought him to the reef are very stupid and unnaturally looking.

* How can Dylan know that Cordelia was in National Geographic? He couldn't just walk out of the water and buy one!

* The people that made this film should have made the fish look more natural. In this way I'm not even sure that Troy really is a tiger shark (because I think that tiger sharks have some kind of stripes on them).

* There's a wise sea turtle, Nerissa. Why does it always need to be a turtle? Putting a sea snake or something instead of Nerissa would be more original, I think.

* The graphics are awful!

* Troy is smiling through the whole film! How can a baddie smile all the time? He must be a psychopath or retarded or something!?

* I noticed a goof in the film: in the current there are some jellyfish, and Troy bashes IN THE HEAD of one. The heads don't sting, only the tentacles or how are they called.

* There is a walrus or something in the film, and, during the whole film, he did not go to the surface to breathe (I say this because walruses can't breathe under water).

In the end, I give this film a 3 out of 10. Why 3, why not 1? Because I watched it the second time with my little cousin, a toddler. She enjoyed the film, so I think this movie is suited for toddlers.

Truly, this is an awful film. I loved Finding Nemo and I enjoyed Shark Tale, and I saw this film expecting it to be less good than either of these films but worth a watch none-the-less. This was not the case.

Obviously I am not the target audience for this film. I am seventeen and this film is clearly aimed at children much younger than myself. However, most children's films are made bearing in mind that they will mostly be seen by adults as well. This film can't have been - there are no jokes for kids, let alone adults. The whole thing feels like a bad computer game; an impression emphasised by the bizarre pause that follows everything any of the characters say. The ending, especially, gives the impression that somewhere there's a kid with a console playing out the action.

Not everything in this film is appalling. Sometimes - just sometimes - it comes up with something that really is moving or humorous. However, the tears and the laughter quickly dry up when you remember that you saw the exact thing in Finding Nemo or Shark Tale, only better. The level of plagiarism this film reaches was previously unknown to me. Never before had I seen anything that ripped off anything else to the degree that this film does. Even Freddie Prinze Jr.'s enthusiastic vocals can't lift this one - he's clearly trying his best and, although his best is not wonderful, it shouldn't have found its way into a film this poor.

Overall, the animation is shocking, the characterisation is non-existent and the story has clearly been stolen and dumbed-down until it means nothing, makes no sense and makes the audience feel far more willing to buy that Finding Nemo DVD. Avoid. This. Film.

Functioning only as an apt definition for "hot mess," "The Reef" is really just an awful movie. The script, the voice acting, and the animation are not even a notch above film school amateur hour. In fact, a conscientious mouse jockey in his mom's basement could probably compose a 5-minute CGI short on his Mac with more going for it.

"The plot" does not matter as the similarities between it, "Finding Nemo," and "Shark Tale" are so obvious that Helen Keller could find them. The glaring deficiencies in the quality of CGI, screenplay, voice acting and the feeble rip-off of other far more capable screen stories makes one wonder why someone at some point didn't come to their senses and ditch this project long before it ever made it in the can.

It tries for some jokes but fails every time. In fact, I don't think I laughed once. Even purposefully bad groaners fail to elicit a chuckle. The puns are so deliberate and juvenile it's baffling that it could have passed muster to any adult sensibility. But, then again, even "Howard the Duck" got made.

One of the key reasons there are no laughs is that there is no good voice acting. There is zero personality attached to these characters. Everyone involved is phoning in it and probably going for a paycheck to cover their Christmas fund.

Movies like this make you appreciate the thoughtful craftsmanship of Pixar's movies. It makes you realize how vital the story and the composition of the script is - not to mention, of course, their vastly superior CGI animation. Even relatively "bad" CGI movies like Shark Tale and Madagascar have tons more personality and skill behind them than "The Reef" does. As desperately tired as I am of all these awful and cheaply made CGI movies about animals, insects, or both, at least most of them have some basic charm and a few jokes you may actually laugh at, thus in some measure vaguely redeeming themselves.

"The Reef," however, has no redeeming value at all. Best to leave this one alone as watching it will merely be torture.

I adore animation, I grew up on it, but I have seen some real stinkers. When it comes to computer animated films, at the top of my head, I can only think of Animals United and Doogal that are worse. Other than a couple of good frames in the haunted shipwreck sequence, The Reef(aka Sharkbait) is a mess.

The animation/graphics are terrible lacking in originality and attention to detail, in fact some scenes look incomplete. The colours are plentiful but look flat in shade and the backgrounds look as though they were taken out of Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. Worse are the character designs which are incredibly forced and stiff.

There is also some really poor writing as well, it is clichéd and lacking severely in humour and heart. The film is too short and has moments where it feels rushed or too pedestrian which further exposes the story for what it is. The story is also a major weak link, it is very thin and feels recycled of other (better) animated films. And even when it didn't feel like that, the level of unoriginality that is in this film is shocking.

None of the characters I felt anything for, they were either bland or annoying. On paper, the vocal cast seemed tolerable, on film they sound bored and sound as though they are not connecting with the characters.

Overall, as much as I love animation I really disliked this. 1/10 Bethany Cox

Compared to this, films like The Little Mermaid and more recently Finding Nemo are broad, groundbreaking epic pieces of surrealist animated genius that echo Fantasia. Yes, Shark Bait truly is that bad in fact it could well be looked at as a new low for animation as a whole. But it's not that Shark Bait isn't just bad, it's mostly pointless. Did we really need another film about a young and energetic hero who must overcome his self doubts and doubters as he strives to win the heart of a young female and beat the bad guys in the process, creating a better and safer new order? No, we didn't but Shark Bait goes ahead anyway.

I read that this film was a joint venture between the U.S.A. and South Korea; ugh, what do these two nations have in common when it comes to film-making? Shark Bait's cast includes R. Lee Ermey; John Rhys-Davies; Donal Logue; Rob Schneider and Freddie Prinze Jr. Love or hate any of the cast, that's still an impressive array of different personalities but judging by the animation, did they blow all the money on the cast? There used to be a time when it didn't matter who was doing the voiceovers and the goal was to create a dynamic and visually impressive experience, not any more it would seem; now we have to have names to fill up the posters and get people in – but get them into what?

A word on the animation. On this occasion, the film looks more like a badly rendered PC screensaver produced by a second rate company for an equally second rate computer, and that's at the best of times. There is one occasion when the animation threatens to pull through and that's when the hero and his girl are above the sea level watching the moon – the ripples in the water and clouds above seem impressive enough, but that's when you realise the two fish have been above the water for so long, they would've 'drowned' by now.

Also, a point on the joint U.S.A./South Korea set-up is that they're two very different nations when it comes to animation or cartoons. When I think of Korea, I guess I think of 'funimation', or 'cute' animation, something that has perhaps spilled over from Japanese contemporary culture. Now, it's all well and good saying this is a kids film and so forth and that it fits but there is a clash of ideas here. The Americans have made some cracking animated films in the last few years such as Monster's Inc.; Ice Age and Finding Nemo but these were American through and through and there is no 'influence' or clashing from other nation's animated ideas.

The Shark Bait of the title is Pi (Prinze Jr.), a young fish whose family is swept away by a human fishing net and flees to a fish sanctuary far away to live with a relative. It's here he meets girlfriend Cordelia (Evans-Wood) and shark bully Troy (Logue), who wants Cordelia for himself – can you imagine what the kids between a shark and an angelfish (or whatever Cordelia is) would look like? Anyway, Pi must come to learn that just taking something is the wrong belief and sharing what Troy thinks is additionally incorrect so he must go through a training montage with an elder mentor and on and on it goes. Now, delivering this sort of message to very young kids is fine, I suppose, but when a film is so inept that it sounds like the voice talent was recorded in someone's living room and the script sees needs-must to throw in homosexual German crabs and a photographer of French decent as well as Jamaican and Southern United State accents for the hell of it, it grates on me.

Additionally at Shark Bait's centre is the idea that Cordelia, the female the two males are fighting over, is nothing but a mere prize to be won and that's the catalyst for the whole film to even happen - that part certainly isn't a positive message. The film is all feint, feint set up and no payoff. Did I mention Cordelia is supposed to be some sort of fish celebrity that appears on the cover of National Geographic? I guess the fish know that because one of them must've seen a discarded issue, amid all the other trash, on the bed of where Pi was living at the very beginning. But, this celebrity status is non-existent from the beginning and she manages to go to a concert with Pi without anyone noticing her – that's before the trip above water where they should've died.

The film wonders on and Pi eventually undertakes a training routine from a turtle that knows some sort of martial art in which controlling water bursts and moving at high speed are key; Pi only cracks it when he actually builds up enough energy to get genuinely angry. Everything from Troy's nasty sidekicks, one of whom seems to posses an accent reminiscent of a 1930s Hollywood gangster whilst the other seems to be doing a really bad Christopher Walken impression, to Troy's own frequent rhyming as he attempts to get across a sense of evil; it all fails and fails big time.