geokar-1 I'm sorry, but this movie absolutely stinks. Any review giving it more than one star is from someone just being nice. My 2 and 4 year old daughters watched it, like they do every new movie, 6 times in a row the first day. But now it's in the back of the pile and it never comes out.It's hard to decide which is worse: the dialog or the acting. First, Andy Dick, like he does in every movie, stinks. Then there's the fake accents that sound so... what's the word... fake. Fran Drescher is so stale. Freddie Prinze Jr. actually sounds too stiff to be the hero.Every aspect of this movie is a butcher job of a bad movie made worse.

jantoniou Functioning only as an apt definition for "hot mess," "The Reef" is really just an awful movie. The script, the voice acting, and the animation are not even a notch above film school amateur hour. In fact, a conscientious mouse jockey in his mom's basement could probably compose a 5-minute CGI short on his Mac with more going for it."The plot" does not matter as the similarities between it, "Finding Nemo," and "Shark Tale" are so obvious that Helen Keller could find them. The glaring deficiencies in the quality of CGI, screenplay, voice acting and the feeble rip-off of other far more capable screen stories makes one wonder why someone at some point didn't come to their senses and ditch this project long before it ever made it in the can.It tries for some jokes but fails every time. In fact, I don't think I laughed once. Even purposefully bad groaners fail to elicit a chuckle. The puns are so deliberate and juvenile it's baffling that it could have passed muster to any adult sensibility. But, then again, even "Howard the Duck" got made.One of the key reasons there are no laughs is that there is no good voice acting. There is zero personality attached to these characters. Everyone involved is phoning in it and probably going for a paycheck to cover their Christmas fund.Movies like this make you appreciate the thoughtful craftsmanship of Pixar's movies. It makes you realize how vital the story and the composition of the script is - not to mention, of course, their vastly superior CGI animation. Even relatively "bad" CGI movies like Shark Tale and Madagascar have tons more personality and skill behind them than "The Reef" does. As desperately tired as I am of all these awful and cheaply made CGI movies about animals, insects, or both, at least most of them have some basic charm and a few jokes you may actually laugh at, thus in some measure vaguely redeeming themselves."The Reef," however, has no redeeming value at all. Best to leave this one alone as watching it will merely be torture.

angel624 I saw The Reef (which is one of Shark Bait's other titles, to which I shall refer it as) when I was in Ireland, and I kinda liked it. It's definitely not Finding Nemo, and I haven't seen Shark Tale (so I can't compare the two); it's in a class all by itself.Now, many people have said that The Reef is a rip-off of Finding Nemo, Shark Tale, or both movies. But The Reef is more like, and here I quote another user whose name I forget, "Karate Kid with fish".A quick summary of the plot: When Pi suddenly becomes an orphan, he travels with a pod of porpoises (NOT dolphins! As Percy laments, "Why does everyone think I'm a dolphin?") to the reef in order to live with his aunt. Pi meets up with his cousin, Dylan, and a beautiful model named Cordelia. Pi is immediately smitten with Cordelia, but a big problem stands in his way. Troy the tiger shark wants to give Cordelia his pearl (the equivalent of a wedding ring, and a bit of a symbol of giving one's purity to his/her spouse...but that's a different story). But Pi can't stand to see Cordelia pushed around by that big bully and his two cronies, a barracuda and a wolf eel, so he decides to do something about it...but what? With the help of Dylan, Percy and his pod, Nerissa the ninja/wizard sea turtle, three old marlins, a seal with grand storytelling skills, a sassy crab, and a flippant saw shark, Pi sets off to save the reef...and the girl he loves. But -- cue dramatic music -- will he succeed? I still remember a few quotes, like "The captain is ashamed of you...and he doesn't even exist!" (Nerissus), and "Evil henchmen don't get the willies. They *give* the willies!" (the barracuda). Plus, the three old marlins swapping human stories (Remember that last fish you caught? How sure are you that it wasn't trying to catch you?) and a few undersea puns ("Check out my mussels" and "Un-fishin-believeable!") will catch the fish nerd in you.Of course, the CGI is a bit strange. Some people call it cheap effort, but I say it's merely artistic license. Then again, I'm overly optimistic...Now, this movie is without flaws, even in my view. Occult/supernatural stuff, lots of unnecessary bathroom gags, and a stereotypical gay attitude to the saw shark gave me the blahs. That's why this movie got a seven out of ten from me.In the end, it all depends on your tastes. If you like fish movies, and you have strange tastes, then go on ahead and see it...although you may want to wait for the DVD and just rent that...it's really up to you.And, if you *really* like fish movies (like I do), then why not watch FiN, ST, and TF as a triple-feature?

dbborroughs 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....