Teaching children the valuable lesson of how to mope properly, The Pout-Pout Fish opened this week to the audience of, well, me. And me alone. Unintentionally, I got a private screening for this one. You see, Hoppers is still out in theaters, and while seeing Hoppers twice would have been a better move, I make a point of seeing everything I can at least once. And The Pout-Pout Fish is part of everything. Last I checked. At least.
Mr. Fish (voice of Nick Offerman) ain’t happy. The perpetually frowning sea curmudgeon seems to approach life with a grumpiness usually reserved for extras on “Seinfeld.” Mr. Fish lives in wreckage. He minds his own business, and, yet, is visited one day by a curious and annoying young sea dragon named Pip (Nina Oyama). In his desire to stop dealing with Pip, Mr. Fish accidently destroys both their homes. And now they gotta search the ocean together for relief and family.
This is nothing like Finding Nemo. Not a thing like it. Stop comparing them!
Well, here’s something new, I think: a wish-granting fish. Mr. Fish and Pip go in search of Shimmer, the wish-granting fish. And have adventures, as is apt to happen in a film like this. Meanwhile, the reef is swarming with cuttlefish, who find their own habitat uninhabitable due to kelp blockage. So, some cuttlefish-aligned starfish hip Benji, idiot cuttlefish prince, to the fact that Shimmer exists. Now the race is on to find this special wish-granting fish.
If that sounds silly, it should. It is silly. And the film knows it. But that didn’t stop the film from making this the pressing plot point for every creature in the ocean. So how will a grumpy Pout-Pout and a baby sea dragon find Shimmer first? Probably by cheating. Oh, and I gotta say that if you get labeled a Pout-Pout fish at a young age, you’re kinda doomed, huh?
I have no special love of curmudgeons nor baby sea dragons in need of coddling; how am
I gonna cope here, especially knowing that this is simply a re-telling of a much better Pixar film in a different form? Hmmm, well, it could have been worse. A lot worse. I know; that’s not much of an endorsement, but I did like some of the gags in this one, like when Mr. Fish encourages his hyperventilating new friend to use a puffer fish as a paper bag. That was funny. As was the part where a group of pink dolphins turn out to be Mean Girls (“quit trying to make fin happen”).
The messages of both teamwork and self-empowerment were also positive. You know, in a slightly different atmosphere, and with an award-winning song or two (and a completely different title), this film could have been a blockbuster. Then again, that’s kind a like saying, “If Star Wars hadn’t been set in space, nobody would have watched it,” which is possibly true, and 100% irrelevant. Did The Pout-Pout Fish fail on its own merits? Yes. But I could easily see circumstances by which it might not have … or could at least have attracted a theater audience of more-than-me.
There once was a grump of a fish
Not wanting to give up his dish
Obligation prevailed
So Mr. Fish sailed
With a companion in search of their wish
Rated PG, 92 Minutes
Director: Ricard Cussó, Rio Harrington
Writer: Elise Allen, Elie Choufany, Deborah Diesen
Genre: Pixar knockoff
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Optimists, maybe?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: ‘This was better when it was called Finding Nemo”
