This film epitomises the risk that filmmakers (both live-action and animated) take with adapting a long-running or ongoing manga - a vast amount of material has to be peeled back to the core essentials to make a film with a feature-length running time.
Sometimes you can shorten the plot of the manga considerably, add in scenes and motifs and end up with a timeless piece of art like Katsuhiro Otomo’s ‘Akira’. Chop out too much or pick the wrong elements to keep, and you can sink even a film as visually rich as ‘Children of the Sea’ beneath waves of turgid storytelling.
- Jake Watt
Read Jake's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-children-of-the-sea-sunk-by-a-soggy-script
Head to https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/sff for more Sydney Film Festival reviews.
