It seems like on-screen fantasy is in a bit of a crisis mode: Big-ticket franchises like “Lord of the Rings” or “The Wheel of Time” are struggling to find audiences even as streamers pay big bucks for multi-season arcs, and even the former has tried to keep the theatrical wing of its IP alive with animated works like the whimper that was “War of the Rohirrim.” “Sirens of the Deep,” Netflix’s latest animated original, sees them giving their tentpole fantasy property “The Witcher” alive in similar fashion, and the results feel just as disposable. At least you don’t have to shell out a movie ticket for this one, I suppose.
To the credit of “Voltron: Legendary Defender” studio MIR and director Kang Hei Chul (“Lookism”), “Sirens of the Deep” is at least smart enough to adapt an Andrzej Sapkowski short story from the “Witcher” universe (“A Little Sacrifice”), making it feel like a standalone adventure in Geralt of Rivia’s (Doug Cockle) journeys through blood, sweat, sex, and coin. Set at an ambiguous point in Geralt’s adventures with comic-relief bard Jaskier (Joey Batey, reprising his role from the show), “Sirens” sees our heroes wander into a seaside kingdom in the middle of a cold war with the merpeople and sea-creatures that occupy the rival kingdom below. A fragile peace pervades, mostly due to young human prince Agloval (Camrus Johnson) and his romance with aquatic mer-princess Sh’eenaz (Emily Carey); but the warlike king Zelest (Ray Chase) and failson brother Usveldt (Simon Templeman) have designs for conquest. In come Geralt and Jaskier, weary and poor thanks to Geralt’s irritating scruples for a Witcher, who quickly find themselves wrapped up in the intrigue.
The animation is par for the course if you remember Netflix’s “Voltron” or the previous “Witcher” prequel anime, “Nightmare of the Wolf”—handsome and smoothly rendered, if somewhat unremarkable save for the agility the medium lends Geralt when it’s time for him to pick up the sword and get to work. He flips, twirls, and spins with all the flexibility of a trained gymnast as he sets his sights on man and creature alike; the film’s few action sequences are decent fun, if hardly the most inventive things you’ve ever seen. The character designs are sharp and angular enough, though they don’t take much advantage of the “Witcher” sleaziness beyond a few spurts of welcome gore and some carefully-angled nudity.
And yet, those scenes sparkle compared to the warmed-over palace intrigue and “Little Mermaid” riffs contained in Mike Ostrowski and Rae Benjamin’s script, with only a few of Jaskier’s wry, Whedonesque witticisms to keep your attention. (With Batey here, we also get the odd musical number, though—as is common with anything past the first season of the show—can’t hold a candle to “Toss a Coin To Your Witcher,” even if we get a camp Ursula-like number with the main sea witch villain.) When Geralt and Jaskier get a chance to banter, it’s reasonably diverting; while there’s no Cavill, it’s fun to hear Cockle, who’s voiced Geralt in all manner of video games and other media, get a chance to play him in the relative big leagues. But then we’re distracted by flashbacks to Jaskier’s past, or the intervention of Essi (Christina Wren), a rival from Jaskier’s past who ends up playing placeholder love interest for Geralt, and one’s attention begins to wane.
I can’t decide whether it’s the relative disposability of the narrative, the unremarkable animation, or the fact that this just feels like another spoonful of content thrown into Netflix’s trough, but “Sirens of the Deep” reads like so many empty calories. Like “War of the Rohirrim,” it feels like a franchise placeholder, something to occupy audience’s time and keep the brand (and the rights) spinning just long enough for the next major installment to take hold. “The Witcher” is already in the midst of a transition of its own, as Cavill’s departure makes way for Liam Hemsworth to take the sword and the wig; while we wait to see what that fourth (and potentially final?) season will look like, “Witcher” diehards might well make do with “Sirens” as a consolation prize. But it does feel like settling for less.
Currently streaming on Netflix.
