Shark Bait (2006)

Directors:

Howard E. Baker
John Fox

Writers:

Scott Clevenger (screenplay)
Chris Denk (story)

Release Date:

7 July 2006 (South Korea)

Genre:

Animation | Family

Tagline:

The adventure continues (Israeli tag-line)

Plot:

One fish must find his destiny to save his home and the love of his life from a bullying shark.

Plot Keywords:

Shark | Fish | Turtle | Computer Animation | Scene During End Credits

Cast

Freddie Prinze Jr.	...	Pi (voice)
Rob Schneider	...	Nerissa (voice)
Evan Rachel Wood	...	Cordelia (voice)
Donal Logue	...	Troy (voice)
Andy Dick	...	Dylan / Curious Shark (voice)
Fran Drescher	...	Pearl (voice)
John Rhys-Davies	...	Thorton (voice)
R. Lee Ermey	...	Jack (voice)
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Bruno Alexander	...	Pi's Dad (voice)
Brice Beckham	...	Green Gossiping Fish / Cynical Shark (voice)
Jimmy Bennett	...	Young Pi (voice)
Dylan Cash	...	Young Percy (voice)
Michael Cornacchia	...	Angler Fish (voice)
Richard Epcar	...	Moe (voice)
David Fickas	...	Max / Squid No. 3 / Big Shark (voice)
Trent Ford	...	Percy (voice)
Reedy Gibbs	...	Pi's Mom (voice)
Joel Michaely	...	Lou (voice)
Megahn Perry	...	Percy's Mum / Female Parrotfish (voice)
Matthew Rauch	...	Mussel No. 2 / Sponge / Buddy (voice)
Mel Rodriguez	...	Manny, Dr. Tang (voice)
Tahnee Shah	...	Prawn (voice)
Tia Shah	...	Prawn (voice)
Kirk Zipfel	...	Mussel No. 1 / Squid No. 1 (voice)

Also Known As:

The Reef (South Africa: English title) (UK)
Pi's Story (South Korea)
The Pearl (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

USA:77 min

Country:

USA | South Korea

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Certification:

USA:G | Brazil:Livre | Ireland:G | Netherlands:6 | Portugal:M/6 | Finland:K-7 | South Korea:All | New Zealand:G | Singapore:G | Australia:G

Company:

Digi Art

Quotes:

[imitating Darth Vader from ‘Star Wars V’]
Sharp-toothed baddie sidekick: I am your father. Come to the dark side. Oh wait - you can't come to the dark side because you're not evil enough.

Movie Connections:

References Free Willy (1993)

Soundtrack:

Its True

Amusing dialog and great performances lift up a mess of a movie that's mostly stitched together from pieces seemingly stolen from other movies

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....