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The Sea Beast Movie Review

The Sea Beast is a 2022 animated adventure film directed by Chris Williams and released on Netflix. It’s such a pleasant, vibrant and adventurous flick.

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“But you can be a hero and still be wrong“

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A young girl stows away on the ship of a legendary sea monster hunter, turning his life upside down as they venture into uncharted waters. Chris Williams of ‘Moana’, ‘Bolt’ and ‘Big Hero 6’ fame recently ended up leaving Disney and settling at Netflix. That move resulted in this picture, a project that is very Disneyesque, but with a few different touches of its own.

It is always refreshing to witness a new studio enter the animation realm and this is a much better Netflix animation film than their previous bit hit ‘The Mitchells vs. the Machines’. This one harkens back to the classic tales of yesteryear, not just the Disney flicks, but also the 19^th century iconic adventure novels and pirate tales. Hopefully, this will inspire other studios to dip their toes into pirate movies as well as we really need more of these.

When The Sea Beast began, it was off to a rocky start with a highly implausible action sequence and overly one-note pirate characters. Thankfully though, the movie quickly revealed itself as promoting environmentalism and animal rights, thus becoming a modern take on a classic pirate story that features a hugely important message for children. In that way it channeled ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, but it still ended up being its own thing.

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Now, that message was too preachy here. It was amazing of course and crucial to teach the young ones, but we get so many didactic dialogues during the third act that they rendered the film far from subtle. Humans are the real monsters is the point it’s trying to make, but it was hammered down kids’ throats way too much here. But I still liked their attack on British imperialism, though the final message that they should not be going to adventures anymore at all bothered me. The perfect middle ground would be not to harm any animals, but still explore the natural surroundings without touching anything.

The movie flows well and it’s surprisingly devoid of frenetic action sequences as the second half focuses more on dialogue and emotional character arcs. The action that we get is still thrilling, though. The highlight is that kaiju-like fight between two monsters. The pirate adventure elements were truly arresting here and the movie is undeniably charming in that old-fashioned adventure genre hook.

Jacob and Maisie are the protagonists of this tale. The former has an expected, but well realized change of heart while the latter is your standard precocious child character that was oddly written. She started off as wanting adventure and a swashbuckling life, but way too quickly realizing what’s going on. I do get that kids sometimes are smarter than parents when it comes to common sense, but this was still highly unbelievable to me.

With that being said, the two share a wonderful friendship and are the heart of the movie along with the red beast. The captain character is a bit too villainous toward the end, but still quite memorable while his first mate also got a solid arc. These beasts were designed to resemble huge Pokémon in a way as they were garishly colored and incredibly cute.

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Although obviously too cartoony, I still loved those designs unlike the humans that represent pretty much the same old Disney design of huge eyes and big heads. Apart from character design, the animation is otherwise staggeringly stunning. In fact, it fares better than any recent Disney movie due to its meticulous details, superb effects and incredible natural vistas with the water itself being the most lifelike I’ve seen so far in a CGI movie. I also loved The Sea Beast’s catchy score inspired by sea shanties. I just wish that the movie was less preachy as otherwise it came very close to a minor classic in the medium.

Directed by Disney veteran Chris Williams, The Sea Beast is among the best that Netflix has to offer so far when it comes to animated feature films. While its important and beautiful animal rights message was presented through overly preachy, far from subtle didacticism, the film is still uplifting in that regard while also being spirited in its adventurous elements and absolutely gorgeous in some of the best and most lifelike CGI yet. The main characters were also very well realized and the flick is both hugely entertaining and highly affective.

My Rating – 4