(courtesy IMP Awards)
Based on the book of the same name by Deborah Diesen with art by Dan Hanna, The Pout-Pout Fish is of those films that comes with a fairly simple premise but which becomes so much more thanks to clever writing and some mischievously inventive animation.
Adapted from the book that was selected as one of TIME Magazine’s top ten children’s books of 2008 by Elise Allen and Elie Choufany, The Pout-Pout Fish is a US-Australian co-production that ticks many of the same boxes that its contemporaries do but with a deliciously offbeat sensibility that absolutely serves and enhances the source material.
From a fairly standard point of view, the film is very much what you’d expect from an animated movie created in the 21st century – its frequently subversive, meta, cheeky and absurdly silly, wrapping all of that gleeful playfulness around a huge heart that treats the emotional concerns of its two central characters are very serious things worthy of some suitably serious treatment.
Getting that mix between wacky and worthy is never an easy thing to do in any animated film, with the balance often tipping one way or another and sending the film down a path that can still be entertaining but one-noted in the extreme.
The Pout-Pout Fish never succumbs to this, and while it wears its heart very much on its sleeve thanks to the innocently exuberant openheartedness of hyperactive baby yellow leafy seadragon, Pip (Nina Oyama), who is full of zest and unthinking enthusiasm for literally everything, it is balanced out by the cynical churlishness of a sky blue and purple ocean pout, Mr. Fish (Nick Offerman) who was once as joyously open to new things in life as Pip but who has become cold and unhappy as life robbed him and wore him down.
These two wholly different creatures of the sea, who occupy the same reef somewhere off the coast of Australia, aren’t really the kind of characters who would become fast friends, and certainly Mr. Fish spends much of the early-to-mid part of the film making it clear he wants no part of Pip’s garrulous effervescence, The Pout-Pout Fish sends its protagonists off a grand chase that will hopefully change both their lives, he relents and recaptures the lost half-class-full-ness of his childhood.
But before any of that road to Damascus reef can even happen, the two have to meet and they do when Pip, excited about enlarging her family home so her parents have room for her 300-400 new siblings, thinks that Mr. Fish’s boat wreck home is ripe for some handy salvaging.
It’s a fair enough assumption, with the boat, split in two jagged, steamboat-y halves, looking as forlorn and broken as its inhabitant who loves meditation and a Japanese garden aesthetic and whose only trips into the heart of the reef are to the hardware store where he is a gruff and entirely unresponsive customer.
His is a small “l” life and he’s fine with that; well, he thinks he is until he and Pip collide, almost literally, and he has to reckon with the fact that this shipwreck of a home has tumbled off its precarious perch on the reef and taken out Pip’s family home (not a spoiler; this gem of visual comedy is in the trailer and is much of the reason this animation fan sought out the film in the first place).
He doesn’t want to help her fix her home before the parents arrive back but Pip guilt trips a good one and before you know it, Mr. Fish and Pip are racing across kilometres and kilometres of reef to find Shimmer, a mystical pink Siamese fighting fish who is rumoured to be able to grant any wish your heart desires.
It’s at this point that Shimmer, The Pout-Pout Fish becomes a McGuffin craving adventure journey film which not only brings them in contact with influencer-level vapid pink dolphins (voiced by the incomparable Amy Sedaris) but purple box jellyfish, one of whom Shaz is voiced by standout Aussie stand-up comedian Mel Buttle, and a mother whale desperate to find her lost calf.
They have a choice here – stick to their goal with singleminded devotion and leave these creatures who need help to their own devices or help them and hope they can still find Shimmer before an orange cuttlefish named Benji (Remy Hii) who is determined to save his extensive cuttlefish village’s chasm-like home.
Mr. Fish wants no part of all these good deeds but no surprise that Pip does, and as they take time out from a very important quest to save both their homes, they are changed, Mr. Fish especially and realise that connection and fishy humanity is more rewardingly important than simply selfishly getting their wishes granted.
The joy of The Pout-Pout Fish, and there is joy aplenty in this manically funny thrill ride across the reef, which values sight gags almost as eagerly as it does cleverly taut lines of dialogue, is that carries its messaging with a warm and enrapturing touch.
It has some heartfelt and warmly important things to say, but it delivers them with a light and hilariously soft touch, serving up as much buoyant humour as it does emotional impactfulness.
It’s a neat balance but The Pout-Pout Fish manages it with aplomb, and while it may not have the same sophistication as one of Pixar’s higher shelf efforts, it’s still a significant cut above the usual animated fare, as affecting as it happily over the top.
Watching The Pout-Pout Fish is to have your heart met with thoughtful sentiments about love, family, belonging and altruistic connection while laughing yourself silly at the idea of influencer pink dolphins or a chase scene across the reef having to wait for fish to cross at the lights.
You finish this gem of a film buoyed and alive, not simply because it is happy to wear its heart on its sleeve, but because it is able to balance this with a wild and witty sense and take you on a journey that busts a gut laughing but knows that in the end, we want our heart filled with hope and connection and that both will happen as we say goodbye to the renewed and revived denizens of this wonderful story.