Sea Dream

This is one of the weaker pieces of animation from the National Film Board of Canada. Although its animation is better than usual for this period -- the great expense of hand-drawn work during this period resulted in a reduction of detail that placed more and more stress on good writing and less on execution. Despite the costs, this is one of the more visually accomplished pieces of animation of the 1970s.

My issue with this piece is the narration; it's done in a mush-mouthed child's voice that is difficult to understand. I accept that it was done under the auspices of UNICEF to celebrate the rights of children, the narration makes the dream-like, poetic narration difficult to follow.

I would have to agree with the other reviewer here that this short is definitely one of the weakest if not the worst over all of the National Film Board of Canada animation shorts that I have seen in my life. I've seen a lot of them and the NFB is well known and deservedly show for making some great animated shorts over the years, and especially back in this era, but there are a few weak ones and this one always did stick out to me as particularly poor.

I would also agree that the animation in this is well done. I didn't think it was great but it was definitely acceptably well done and definitely the best part of this short. The real weak parts were the narration which I did not think was as terrible as the other reviewer but which definitely a poor choice and of poor quality, and the truly awful and uninspired poem they chose to use. I wonder if maybe the reason for the childish narration is that this is possibly a poem written by a child? If so that is very unclear and that's another problem with this piece, it's just kind of presented to us without making complete sense.

Anyway avoid this one because it takes away from the other NFB shorts which are fantastic and not every one of their shorts could hit the target!

Good animation, bad narration and terrible poem (or terribly presented if written by a child).