The Reef

The Reef Review

The Reef Overview

After losing everything, a young fish, Pi, goes to live with his family on the Reef. There he meets the love of his life but finds that she already has the unwanted affections of a bully shark. He must follow his destiny to save her and rid the Reef of this menace for good.

The Reef Specifications

The story of a young fish who suffers a great loss and moves to a new town where he falls in love with a beautiful fish and angers the resident shark bully, The Reef (initially known as Shark Bait) is a beautifully computer animated film with striking similarities to Finding Nemo and Shark Tale. The first Hollywood feature-length, all computer generated film ever made in Korea, The Reef won the Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence and is a great display of saturated colors, nice underwater detailing, and anthropomorphic animation that endows every fish with an abundance of character while retaining its believability as a fish. The voice talent is good and includes Freddie Prinze Jr. as Pi, Evan Rachel Wood as Cordelia, Fran Drescher as Pearl, Donal Logue as Troy, and Rob Schneider as a variety of sea creatures including Nerissa. The story is engaging, but the whole film watches like a Finding Nemo knock-off with scenes like the pelican bobbing on the channel marker, the Portuguese Man of War that populate the West Indies current, and the wise old turtle Nerissa who teaches Pi so much about the ways of the sea. Similarities to Shark Tale also abound, the most obvious being one little fish's determination to stand up to the big bully shark. Appropriate for ages 3 and older, although the initial scene where Pi's mother and father are caught in a fishing net may prove upsetting to very young or sensitive children. --Tami Horiuchi