Festin de requin

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.

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.

The special effects again are superb but this is Finding Nemo in reverse i.e the parents get taken away and Pi (Nemo) is left behind, if you haven't seen Finding Nemo you will like it.

It becomes very clear at the beginning of the film what the plot is and takes a long time to reach the end!

There's is nothing new or nail biting in this one and there is no humour at all, which is very disappointing.

All in all very disappointing as a follow up movie to Shark Tale which there really are no similarities with it should have been called Finding Nemo 2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Reef (aka Shark-bait) is a(n occasionally watchable) mess of a movie. The plot of the film has Pi, a fish from Boston Harbor fleeing south to "The Reef" to find his aunt after his parents are scooped up in a fishing net. Once on the reef he falls for the most beautiful girl in the area and runs a foul of a shark.

The film doesn't so much plagiarize Finding Nemo (which is sort of reversed here) and the other animated films from the last few years as rip them apart and stitches them together into a movie so unoriginal you'll swear you've seen it before. It's a jaw dropping in its unoriginality. There's a drinking game in this movie where you take a drink every time you spot a riff from some other movie. I'd love to see someone take the film and annotate it so that there is a list of steals.

The character designs run the gamut from really good to what were they thinking. The look of the girl fish for example is quite lovely, the design for Pi's "psychic" aunt is amusing, while the look of the three eyed friend of Pi's parents back in Boston is clichéd but very funny. On the other hand characters like the shark and the old timers are blocky and awful. The backgrounds are an odd mix. Some are fantastically detailed settings like Pi's aunt's home or the pirate ship which look great; on the other hand there is the nothingness of the open ocean (and I do mean nothingness), with the characters seeming to hang all alone in a world that's just the blank sea. (while I understand that's probably what it would look like in the ocean, its really dull to look at on the big screen). The some of the animation is lacking any sort of finished quality appearing as what looks like a half step up from test footage. Its as if they had an incomplete staff of animators so they could only really finish bits of the animation.

Oddly the dialog seems much better than the Frankenstein like plot. To be certain many of the jokes have been lifted from elsewhere and you will find yourself saying the punchlines before the characters do, but there's a good chance that you'll still be amused thanks to the work of people like Fran Drescher, John Rhys-Davies and R Lee Ermey who take their stock characters and turn them into something more than a wooden prop.

Its oddly amusing at times in a weird sort of way, but I can't recommend you actually pay to see this movie. To be certain this is the sort of movie you'll watch a couple of times on cable but that doesn't mean its worth your hard earned money. Its one of those bad movies that you find yourself enjoying on TV simply because its not as bad as your other choices and because its not really costing you anything.

Trust me this is a cable movie....