“The Pout-Pout Fish” is a funny, cleverly written children’s book by Deborah Diesen about a fish who has embraced the fact that he has resting bitch face. The Pout-Pout Fish the movie is a bland, lamely written kid’s movie that throws away just about everything that made the book(s) enjoyable.
To be fair, adapting the book into a feature-length film was no easy task, as it essentially involves a sad fish encountering various acquaintances who tell him to cheer up, with Mr. Fish responding with the amusing retort: “I’m a pout-pout fish, with a pout-pout face, so I spread the dreary-wearies, all over the place.”
He only turns that frown upside down when a female fish flashes her gills at him and gives him a nibble on cheek, causing him to proclaim he’s a “kiss-kiss fish” who spreads the “cheery-cheeries all over the place.”
There are other books in the series, but the plots are light. Further, the books rely heavily on funny rhymes and play on words–something that doesn’t necessarily translate to the big screen.
But the soul of the books is completely absent from The Pout-Pout Fish movie. The filmmakers could have created a world where every creature speaks with exaggerated words and phrases as Diesen envisioned them, where Mr. Fish leaves a trail of “dreary-wearies all over the place,” where he falls in love and suddenly cheers up (perhaps becoming overly smitten and relying on Miss Shimmer for emotional support a tad too much?). Something. Anything.
Instead, they took a character who looks like the Pout-Pout Fish, gave him the voice of Nick Offerman because why not, and dropped him into a generic fish tale that could have been any set-under-the-sea fish story.
At a merciful 90 minutes, The Pout-Pout Fish still feels long, with the stakes incredibly low, the scenes predictable, and the screenplay trying as hard as a beached fish on its last painful breath.
But I also have to be real: unlike the animated comedies that cater to children and parents alike (looking at you, Hoppers), The Pout-Pout Fish is designed solely for children–and ones skewing to the younger side. My seven-year-old, who loved the books but hasn’t read them in a year or two, liked the movie but didn’t seem enthralled by it–she’s already outgrown it.
The animation isn’t anything to swim home about, but it’s bright and colorful and does the trick if you think about the movie in context of its intended audience (little kids don’t give a damn). There is enough action and silly characters to appease the young ones. I chuckled in a couple of parts, too, and liked the sleazy starfish (who suspiciously looked a lot like Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas).
The Pout-Pout Fish would have worked better as a short film, a la the 30-minute Room on the Broom Netflix adaptation of the corresponding book. Stretched to 90, it’s clear the screenwriters opted to just abandon what made the book(s) special altogether, forced to come up with a plot that would satisfy a feature-length runtime. The end result, sadly, isn’t even worth a final fish pun.
Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.
