Seal Team (film)

Seal Team
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Greig Cameron Kane Croudace
Written by	Greig Cameron
Story by	Brian Cleveland Jason Cleveland Wayne Thornley
Produced by	Stuart Forrest Mike Buckland Jean-Michel Koenig James Middleton Anthony Silverston
Starring	J.K. Simmons Jessie T. Usher Matthew Rhys Patrick Warburton Kristen Schaal Sharlto Copley Camille Mana John Kani Dolph Lundgren Seal
Edited by	Luke MacKay
Music by	Elben Schutte Andries Smit
Production companies	Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa Department of Trade & Industry of South Africa Triggerfish Animation Studios National Film & Video Foundation of South Africa Banc of California
Distributed by	Netflix (streaming rights) Cinema Management Group
Release dates	13 October 2021 (2021-10-13) (Netherlands) 31 December 2021 (2021-12-31) (Netflix)
Running time	101 minutes
Country	South Africa
Languages	English Afrikaans

Seal Team is a 2021 South African computer-animated action comedy film co-directed by Greig Cameron and Kane Croudace, produced by Triggerfish Animation Studios and Cinema Management Group oversees worldwide distribution. The film stars the voices of J.K. Simmons, Jessie T. Usher, Matthew Rhys, Patrick Warburton, Kristen Schaal, Sharlto Copley, John Kani, Dolph Lundgren, and Seal. It tells the story of a group of misfit Cape Fur Seals who come together to fight a gang of ruthless sharks.

The film was released in cinemas in the Netherlands on 13 October 2021, followed by Belgium in 27 October, Czech Republic one day later, and in West Asian Arab countries on 4 November. Netflix acquired the rights for the film for release on 31 December 2021 in many other territories.

Plot

During the 1980s, near the Cape of Storms, an animal military unit called H.M.M.F. (Hydro Marine Military Force), consisting of two African cape fur seals: veteran Claggart & tech genius Switch, & a celebrity striped dolphin named Dolph, are tasked by their human superiors with trying to defuse an underwater mine. Due to a seal's color-blindness, Claggart ends up cutting the wrong wire, & the mine immediately blows up once hauled onto their ship, the Good Boy. This causes a portion of the ship to be destroyed & the ship to wrecked on a rock, while the H.M.M.F. all survive unscathed, though Claggart loses his name tags which drifts off to rest near Seal Island, an island endlessly full of seals. Over time, the now retired H.M.M.F. drift apart: Claggart stays behind on the wreck of the Good Boy, Switch goes insane & lives on his own wreck that he turns into a lab with his imaginary friend, Senior Echo (which is in fact his echo, though he sometimes speaks without Switch talking out loud), & Dolph goes into show business in his own popular superhero show titled: Dial Eck-Eck-Eck-Eck For Action.

In the present day, Claggart's name tag is found by a bold cape fur seal named Quinn & his nervous best friend Benji while hunting for fish, before they are chased off by sharks, whom their community lives in fear of, but their fear is always scoffed at by their elder leader, Brick. Due to the shortage of food, the seals are all forced to eat bad-tasting barnacles while having to wait for the annual sardine run. After retrieving the name tag, Quinn & Benji both share each of the name tags, & go out at night to search for food amongst the human shipwrecks with no luck, & run afoul of a great white shark named Grimes & his remora associates, who tries to eat them. Quinn manages to survive by hiding in the wreck, & calls for Benji to join him, but learns he has been eaten by Grimes after seeing his part of the name tag snagged on his teeth, who then goes for him next, but Quinn is then saved by an elderly Claggart, who drives off Grimes & brings him back to the surface & reclaims his name tag before leaving Quinn. After he comes to, he's found by three cape gannets named Diving Dee, Roger, & Mayday, who has been trying to eat a starfish that's been stuck in her mouth for years, who guide him to the wreck of the Good Boy, where Quinn insist Claggart into teaching him how to fight a shark, which he had experienced him do that to Grimes before he passed out, so he can avenge Benji's death.

After some advice by Claggart to assemble a team in order to accomplish his goal, he returns to Seal Island, where he recruits the energetic but eccentric Beth, who prefers & suggests to licking rocks rather than eat barnacles, & the boastful yet cowardly Great Geraldo, who keeps telling everyone that comes his way about escaping an aquarium in Cape Town, but had to leave behind his Asian cape fur seal girlfriend, Magnificent Jing. They arrive at the Good Boy where Claggart teaches them the skills they need to fight sharks & eventually they pass the final exam. Later that night, after being convinced by Quinn, Claggart takes them to Switch's wreck, where he accepts the offer to join them & shows off his latest biotech weapons to help them, including snapping clam grenades, electric eel bolts, pufferfish mines, stolen synchronized watches (Geraldo instead gets a toy watch), fighting barracuda bazookas, pistol shrimps(that shoots an ion blast of knockout gas when used), & a group of octopuses all named Flicka, who can all turn into a suit that makes anyone invisible. With their training & new weapons, they successfully take down a shark. Two onlooking sharks see this, & report to Grimes, who decides to make an example of them by using his remoras to summon all the sharks in the world, including the one that Quinn & his friends trapped, & orders them to surround Seal Island.

The gannets tell the group of the situation, so Switch suggests using his special formula chum to hypnotize the sharks & lure them away from Seal Island, so they go to Cape Town to retrieve a boat in order to install the chum. Once there, Geraldo reunites with Jing, who forces him to reveal that escaping the aquarium was Jing's idea & she escaped & left him behind due to the fact that he couldn't go through with it, & he was thrown out instead of escaping. After some convincing, Jing joins the team, & they acquire a boat & head back to Seal Island, where they use the chum to lure the sharks away from Seal Island & use the advantage to bombard the sharks with their weapons, distracting them & causing them to smash them into a rock. When the shark they fought attacks their boat, it crashes into a crevice where one of Grimes' remoras gets separated from the shark & take it hostage where they learn from it that surrounding Seal Island was a distraction to keep them busy while Grimes was gathering more shark forces. Geraldo & Jing stay behind to distract the sharks surrounding the boat wreck by tricking them with a play with fake replicas, in which they amend their ways before joining the others near Grimes' wreck to learn his true intentions.

With the help of Flicka, Quinn goes undercover & learns that Grimes is planning to lead an endless population of sharks to attack the Seal Island population on their south to the upcoming annual sardine run. However, Quinn's cover is compromised after Flicka's effects wear off but orders Flicka to activate their countermeasures who do it by covering the entire area of squid ink. In the commotion, Claggart abandons the others to keep the sharks busy, while the others escape. After arriving on the Good Boy, Quinn leaves for Seal Island, as he no longer wants to endanger his friends, but once he arrives, he learns all the seals have gone for the sardine run, & he confronts Brick for mindlessly endangering them, but then the latter regrets that he already knows about sharks, & pretends to believe that sharks aren't real, because even though some seals won't come back, the community will survive, before leaving with the rest of the seals. Knowing that their fate is in his hands, Quinn returns to the Good Boy, & reassembles the team to take down Grimes once & for all.

They arrive at Grime's wreck by sneaking inside the mouth of Dave, a goofy looking, loud-mouthed basking shark whom they frequently encounter. Once there, they assault all the sharks with ambushes, but Grimes appears & traps them in a container, before he joins the other sharks to eat the seals, which have already arrived. The group eventually escape, & manage to protect all the seals, who also lose their fear & join in the fight, along with Brick. They are also joined by Claggart, who is revealed to be alive & had gone to recruit Dolph for the team, who both restart the Good Boy, allowing a chance for the seals to escape on board. Grimes pounces onto the ship & snags Claggart's name tag on Quinn with the other name tag snagged on his tooth, resulting in a tug-of-war, but Quinn breaks free & retrieves both name tags while Grimes loses his balance, falls back into the sea, & is then killed & mauled by the Good Boy's propeller. With Grimes dead, the entire seal colony head for the sardine run on board the Good Boy.

Months later, Quinn & his friends have hauled the Good Boy to Seal Island as their new base, where the residents of Seal Island now honor them as heroes, & they, along with the gannets & Dave, keep the island safe from any seal-eating shark that comes by.

In a series of mid-credits scenes, Dave is seen as a caller on a talk show radio station, where continuously talks about the many objects he accidentally ate other than plankton to prove that not all sharks are dangerous.

Cast

• J.K. Simmons as Claggart, an elderly cape fur seal who comes out of retirement to lead the Seal Team.
• Jessie T. Usher as Quinn, an orphaned cape fur seal.
• Matthew Rhys as Grimes, a villainous great white shark who is the leader of the sharks.
• Patrick Warburton as Geraldo, a boastful yet cowardly cape fur seal.
• Kristen Schaal as Beth, an energetic, but eccentric female cape fur seal.
• Sharlto Copley as Switch, a mentally unstable gadgets expert cape fur seal.
• Camille Mana as Jing, an Asian cape fur seal skilled in martial arts and Geraldo's former lover.
• John Kani as Brick, a scarred old cape fur seal and the leader of the seals who keeps denying the existence of sharks.
• Dolph Lundgren as Dolph, a cigar-chomping striped dolphin with sunglasses whose catchphrase is "Eck eck eck eck! It's go time!"
• Seal as Seal Seal, a singing cape fur seal.
• Julian Smith as Benji, a cape fur seal and Quinn's deceased best friend.
• Kate Micucci as Diving Dee, a friendly, fast-talking cape gannet.
• Anjali Bhimani as
  • Crabby Stabby, a decorator crab.
  • Female great white shark
  • Seal
• Greig Cameron as:
  • Harbor Seal
  • Seal
  • Shark
• Richard Steven Horvitz as:
  • Snap, a sharp-tempered Mako shark.
  • Two of Grimes's remora fish.
• Jan Johns as:
  • Mayday, an insane cape gannet who has a starfish living in her mouth.
  • Geraldo's Watch
  • Seal
  • Shark
• Matthew Mercer as:
  • Dave, a loud-mouthed Basking shark.
  • Shark
• Daran Norris as:
  • Roger, a cape gannet who usually just says "Roger".
  • Radio DJ
• Bumper Robinson as:
  • Chum, a dimwitted great white shark who hangs out with Snap and whose catchphrase is "Who wants to get in my face hole!?"
  • HMMF Animal Handler
  • One of Grimes's remora fish.
• Vivienne Rutherford as Sam
• Secunda Wood as Scarlet
• Jenny Yokobori as:
  • Geraldo's Watch
  • Octopus
  • Seal
• Rick Zieff as Crunch
• Judy Abrahams as Guard
• Julia Anastasopolous as Tour Guide
• Bob Bergen as
  • Seal
  • Octopus
• Rodger Bumpass as Shark
• Remy Edgerly as Seal
• Bill Farmer as Seal
• Quinton Flynn as Shark
• Jason E. Kelley as Seal
• Neal Leachman as:
  • Seal
  • Shark
• Zolani Mohala as Guard
• Kristina Mueller as Shark
• Brent Mukai as Shark
• Brendan Sean Murray as:
  • Seal
  • Shark
• Sarah Natochenny as Shark
• Joe Ochman as Seal
• Ryan Robinson as Shark
• Lindsey Sheppard as Shark
• Catherine Taber as Seal
• Rob van Vurren as Harbor Seal
• Louw Venter as Harbor Seal
• Matthew Wood as:
  • Seal
  • Shark
• Tarryn Wyndgaard as Harbor Seal

Production

In May 2018, it was announced Triggerfish Animation Studios would produce Seal Team as their third feature film. The film was being financed by South Africa's Industrial Development Corporation, the Dept. of Trade and Industry (DTI), and Cinema Management Group (CMG).

While the film was fully created at Triggerfish studios in Cape Town, some of the animation was outsourced to Base FX in Beijing and Johannesburg's Chocolate Tribe handled a portion of the rigging using Maya's mGear and Python tools to give the characters a stop-motion look on the movements.

Dolph Lundgren and Matthew Rhys joined the voice cast in May 2021, Rhys once mentioned that why he wanted to voice Grimes is because he has a 4-year-old son that is obesessed with sharks.

Reception

The New York Times gave it a negative review, claiming "the best cackle comes from reading the voice cameos in the end credits".

In contrast, Decider's verdict was 'Stream It.' They said, "Seal Team has laughs a-plenty and a sense of good natured camaraderie in its heart..." not to mention "inspired voice casting" and "the kind of sight gags that look beyond cartoon kids' fare."

Common Sense Media recommended it for ages six and older, saying "Though it doesn't have the big-name studios behind it, this movie holds its own in the animation and voice acting categories... You can't help but root for the seals."

The SA animation film Seal Team topped the top 10 list of the most-watched shows on Netflix in five continents and 27 countries.

See also

• Seal Team Six

External links

• Seal Team at IMDb
• Netflix
• Rotten Tomatoes