Seal Team

Cute characters, and many Shark tale-like humorous moments. The film does not show us any outstandingly new or extraordinary life lessons, however, the importance of teamwork, friendship, and braveness are things that need to be underlined for every generation. I enjoyed watching this film with my friend.

Cape fur seal, Quinn (Jesse T. Usher) lives on Seal Island along with his best friend Benji (Julian Smith). The seals due to the multitude of sharks around their island home primarily subsist on terrible tasting barnacles only occasionally able to catch a fish and break from the taste of "sand and disappointment". When Benji is eaten by Great White shark Grimes (Matthew Rhys), Quinn is spared the same fate after being rescued by Claggart (J. K. Simmons) former leader of Hyper Marine Military Force (HMMF) a team of sea mammals, with cape fur seal tech expert Switch (Sharlto Copley) and cigar chomping striped dolphin Dolph (Dolph Lundgren), who did clandestine military missions until a sea mine destroyed their ship and left Claggart as an abrasive loner. Upon learning of Claggart's past Quinn recruits fellow cape fur seals consisting of energized eccentric Beth (Kristen Schaal) and boastful coward Geraldo (Patrick Warburton) in the hopes of having Claggart train them in his military skills to form a team to fight back against the sharks. With a team of misfits both new and old coming together the team set out to fight back against the sharks with Grimes ready with an insidious plan.

Seal Team marks the latest film from South African based production house, Triggerfish Animation, who cut their teeth on modestly budgeted features like Adventures in Zambezia and Khumba and are responsible for co-producing a number of TV specials for British TV along with Magic Light Pictures. The studio currently also has a number of TV projects in development for streamers such as Disney+ and Netflix. Seal Team marks the studio's first feature film in about 8 years and on the surface from its celebrity voice cast to its pun-centric title seems like it's tailored made as one of those middle of the road foreign animated films from the likes nWave Pictures or Vanguard Animation that are tailor made for bargain bins in your local store, but in execution the movie surprisingly has a lot of charm and humor to it and despite being on the lower end of the budget spectrum is considerably more stylish than I was expecting.

The movie is very much a parody of "men on a mission" formula military movies down to the fact the movie flashes back to the 80s to show the glory days of HMMF and features Dolph Lundgren in a prominent cameo as a cigar chomping dolphin who fits well within the characterization seen in projects like The A-Team or any number of Cannon Films. The movie lovingly sends up the tropes of this type of military team movie with all the tropes and trappings we know and love from the genre and gets a lot of mileage from its creative weaponry and gadgets like a stealth suit made out of octopi, a barracuda firing weapon called the "barazooka", and a number of other fun elements that lead to some amusing moments.

The cast is very entertaining featuring the likes of J. K. Simmons, Patrick Warburton, Kristen Schaal, and Sharlto Copley are all strong supporting performers who give real life and energy to their performances and help augment the film's humor. Jessie T. Usher as Quinn makes a good protagonist who plays off well against the set of characters, and Matthew Rhys is having fun chewing the scene as the villainous Great White Shark Grimes who's both threatening as an antagonist and pretty funny. The animation is really strong for a smaller studio with Triggerfish going for a slightly simplified style in terms of the designs and animation that almost looks like a stylized stop-motion and falls well in line with the quality of their TV specials they've produced in the intervening years.

Not every joke lands as there are elements such as running gags that aren't all that funny such as British Singer-Songwriter Seal playing a singing cape fur seal called Seal Seal and some gags work better than others, but the humor has so many diverse and amusing moments (including some cheeky references to other shark movies) that when I wasn't laughing I was smiling.

Seal Team is well above average for the standards of many animated films from smaller production houses and with a team of well utilized comic talents and humor and approach that succeeds more often than it stumbles, Seal Team will make enjoyable viewing.

Honestly, I came into this film with my expectations lower than dirt.. Figured it was some more kid shovelware for bad parents to put on the tv when they don't feel like doing their job as a parent, like Cocomelon.

To my surprise, I got a movie with a great cast, a really fun and creative art style, 80s+90s references your kid won't get but you'll love, and great animation. People review-bombing this film for it's animation style have no idea what they're talking about. It's not "cheap" animation, it's a style choice. The animation seems to have been inspired by Sony Animation ( Mitchell's Vs The Machines, Spiderman: Edge of Spiderverse ).

To be honest, it's not a masterpiece. It's a fun film, not everything has to be Avatar or Avengers, have fun with movies people. I would put this animation alongside Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda.

Realistically I'd give it an 8, but I knocked it up 2 stars to try to counter the people rating it low for it's animation style.

Also..... Lazer shark. C'mon, what more do you want?

Quite a lot of known Voice Actors in this movie. Characters were funny.

However the film does have this budget feel, the Animation is somewhat comparable to Spiderman into the Spiderverse, in terms of style and Animation but not nearly as good as such. Still a good movie regardless.

The flaws is that some areas feel too fluid while other areas feel to stiff. The animation feels laggy when it's really not. Just has this delayed reaction like response time, even though there isn't. Almost like you're watching a high quality movie without the loss of pixels yet the animation is that of 20 to 30 FPS. If that even makes any sense. It's really hard to describe it.

I feel that if they had more of a budget and a better way to animate smoother and follow a fluid flowing movie then you'd have yourself an awesome movie. It sorta misses the mark in terms of pacing. A lot of scenes made the movie feel longer than it really needed to be.

On a good day 7/10

But I think it's a Mid movie that needed some more polishing.

I would first like to address the film's "frame rate" issues that I see in a lot of reviews. It's called an art style. It's an homage to stop motion animation, and for anyone complaining that it is "unwatchable", you clearly did not grow up watching any stop motion and only know the Blu-ray 60fps era. The frame rate is fine, as many things move at the full 24 (23.976), while the characters only move at the framerate necessary for the action they are doing. For slower movements, 12 frames is good, while for quick ones, they might bump it up to 18. Overall the jumpy style is fairly enjoyable, and isn't unique to this movie. It's seen in other movies like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, or The Lego Movie, so... if you don't enjoy it, don't blame the production team for making a mistake... it's intentional. If it's just not your taste just say so instead of making an un-educated review.

Now onto my own review.

Honestly, I thought this film was going to flop due to the low rating, however I was fairly impressed by the film.

• The art style was similar to The Mitchells vs the Machines (2021) with its quick swap in animation style (from 3D, to 2D elements, to drawing over the rendered footage at some points). It was quite appealing and something it seems Netflix animations are starting to take use of.

• The comedy was subpar, but they got me a few times with jokes (such as arithmetic jokes, those that have seen it or are about to watch it you'll know what I mean).

• Tons of references for all ages to get (and I mean all ages).

• It had a decent adventure plot. It lacked deep rooted meaning and powerful storytelling elements, but that's not needed to create a good, entertaining film, that's only useful when aiming to create one of the best films out there, and that wasn't their goal. They accomplished their goal of creating a fun family film, and they did it well.

• No outlying toilet humor (which is rare for kids movies these days). Just good clean humor.

• Overall a good redemption story for basically all of the characters, those who regret mistakes they wish they could change.

Now onto the possible cons.

Sometimes I realized how 2 dimensional the characters could be, other times I didn't notice or mind. This comes down to the genre and how deep you're looking into the film I feel. For instance, I feel the characters are similar to the Penguins of Madagascar, fitting one specific role and goal (such as leader, or comedic relief), which isn't such a bad thing. From an analytical perspective, this might be a con, but in this movie it isn't such a bad thing. Obviously some things were outrageous and silly, but that's because it's a family friendly movie, with the primary audience being kids. The first rule of a kids movie is that it can break the suspension of disbelief (a huge nono in movies geared towards adults), because kids have huge imaginations and love the silly, unreal moments (such as fireworks causing a dump truck to mimic bull riding, bouncing all over the place, from Paw Patrol: The Movie). It makes for a funny moment and is absolutely necessary for any successful kids movie.

Overall a well made family friendly animation. When reading reviews, remember that not everyone gives a review with the perspective of the intended audience. For some of these people, they're full grown adults ragging on this film because it's not the next Citizen Kane. If you and your family want an appropriate, fun, and exciting adventure movie to watch, this is one of those films.