Review of Song of the Sea (2014) by Amelia T — 14 Jan 2016

Song of the Sea is one of those films that I somewhat hear about how good it is, but barely any people have seen it, and not only that, it's also an Irish animated film, so that got me curious for that also since I've never seen an Irish film.

Turns out it was a very original movie that's never childish and it teaches the children like grown ups. The plot is about a son who's mother that unexpectedly dies, boy is that dark to say, and he has a sister.

Years later, he's a bitter brother to his sister and his sister starts to have some powers that she never thought she had. There's more to the story, but I didn't want to spoil much of it, but the story is really good and I haven't seen a story like this before.

The movie has one of the main characters that all she does, is never speak, now the only times that I do see a character that doesn't speak, they're either not in the movie, or they are the supporting character, so seeing that type of character as a main one is very risky and it would seem hard to make that character memorable.

Surprisingly it seems like the movie had no trouble with it and made Saoirse very developed. I was worried that Granny is going to be grumpy the entire movie or Ben being rude to his sister, but Granny has some human moments in it, and Ben does act like a very caring brother to her at times.

The voice acting is really good, and the animation is beautiful to look at, which looks like a painting coming to life. The pacing is slow, but I was interested in the brother/sister relationship and the dialogue that the brother had with Saoirse.

With the route that it was taking, it was very well done and was kind of reminding me of Where the Wild Things Are, if that was where it was going to. I hope that Song of the Sea gets a cult following as it's excellent enough to get something like that and I'm glad that I found this movie.