Le Monstre des mers

'The Sea Beast' features incredible animation, and some of the most realistic animated characters (humans) I've ever seen - with regards to appearance and proportion. Jacob is also a rather sexy animated creation, mind you!

Speaking of Jacob, he is one of the film's protagonists. As a youngster, he was rescued by Captain Crow and has been living with him ever since. They are monster hunters. Fresh on the trail of the elusive Red Bluster, Captain Crow abandons the mission (against his will) to save a ship under attack by a sea monster.

The Royals pay Captain Crow to hunt sea monsters, but when he fails to capture the Red Bluster on his latest mission, they inform him they will no longer pay for hunters. Instead, they built their own ship, and the King challenges Captain Crow to see who would be the first to capture the Red Bluster.

An orphan, Maisie, who's parents were killed by a sea monster, stows away on Captain Crow's ship and join them on their adventure. The film's first half was mature, with action, adventure and even suspense all the way. It had an incredible sense of realism until that defining moment (almost exactly at the halfway mark) when it suddenly reduced the film to a 'cute' kid's adventure.

After that 'Pinocchio' moment (yeah, you'll recognize it when you see it!), the characters suddenly resorted to silly actions typical of animated films aimed at a younger demographic, and the suspense made way for humour (even slapstick). The believability was completely gone with the feared Red Bluster now being 'adorable'. The film even had a 'How to train your Dragon' character, Blue, acting almost exactly as Toothless.

The film nevertheless remained exciting (although not as much as the first half), and it certainly was entertaining.

Firstly, the visuals. Everything is visually gorgeous and well designed, from Bridgetown (think Victorian Venice) to the ships to the ocean. A lot of care was taken in the actual animation (i.e. Movement) of all of these elements. The waves and spray of the ocean look like they're from a documentary, the swaying of the ship looks truly forceful and the destruction of the town is full of debris and dust. Not to mention a clever little scene involving a rope and a coconut tree. This gives the entire film an immersive feeling and really raises the stakes as we can truly appreciate how powerful the forces of nature are.

Secondly, the dialogue was great. A lot of the film is just bickering between the sailor and the young child, which showed off their personalities and never got annoying. Every character in this film has such a distinctive personality that it's like we know them in real life.

Thirdly, it's not a very original story. Like many others, I thought of How to Train Your Dragon halfway through watching, as the characters and overall storyline are similar. Does this film add much to improve on that inspiration? Beyond the change in setting, not really. One glaring flaw is the the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon have much more personality, while the beasts in this film are quite tepid.

Overall, a good film. I still rated it 7/10. But it could have been higher if it differentiated itself from previous films and had a more compelling ending.

This is so cute! Amazing animation, great voice acting, good premise and just all around gorgeous! I loved this movie so much! I loved how sweet and adventurous Maisie was! Kudos to the voice actor they did an amazing job portraying Maisie's character! Red was perfectly cute and scary. The water scenes in the beginning with the sea monsters was actually quite frightening. Maybe it's just because I'm afraid of getting lost at sea or in space and being swallowed whole by a ginormous beast. I was watching the movie and I was like is that Karl Urban? And it is!!

This has the feel of a recent Disney Animated film, which is definitely a compliment. From a story that has some real weight to it, to a tiny, cute creature that never fails to provide genuine laughs, Chris Williams really has it all down from his time directing some of Disney's best animated films.

I was surprised by the route they took with the story, as I thought it would be a simple beast hunting plot. The Sea Beast has some real How to Train Your Dragon vibes and it honestly worked for me. It hits a lot of the expected story beats, but when your film is this delightful, you really don't mind. I hope Netflix continues to produce this kind of quality animated fare.

If it was a Disney movie, everyone would be talking about this movie, but unfortunately, not a lot of people saw this movie. For me, I saw the trailer by chance on YouTube, so I was interested. It is a very fun movie with amazing animation and a great story.