The Danes do a fair, if never entirely standout, attempt at copying the formula of the Disney animated film. The animation is a mix of computer-animation and more traditional hand-drawn techniques. The film has drawn some criticism for such, although there is really nothing wrong at all with the hand-drawn animation, it is just that Disney and Pixar have raised the artistic bar in terms of what contemporary audiences have become used and in themselves these sequences are fine. The climactic race to get back up the drainpipe to the lab is quite dramatically enthralling. There’s a quite lovely opening CGI credits sequence with various fish schools floating past, although the standout among the CGI sections is the venture into the villain’s lair, a reconditioned wreck of a sunken ship. The film though never quite manages the sheer liveliness of a Disney film. It’s a little quiet in terms of bubbly humour and energy and there are several really banal songs that drag proceedings down. The characters are likeable enough, from the tiny moppet starfish designed for cuteness appeal to the endearingly bespectacled jellyfish nerd.

In the English-language release, Alan Rickman lends his voice to the role of the piscine Führer and gives a mellifluous power to these scenes, although is often in danger of being upstaged by his dim-witted shark sidekick who has a habit of eating anybody it disagrees with.