Whoever
made Shark Tale knew what they were doing. I might even say they did it
very well (the film was a hit in the US and Europe). But that doesn’t
mean I have to like it. Following in the footsteps of Shrek, this is a
shrewd attempt to flatten all the childhood magic out of cartoons, turning them
into another sub-species of teen-oriented comedy – media-savvy, Attitude-laden
and stuffed with in-jokes.
Admittedly,
cartoons haven’t always been for kids. My friendly video-club owner gave me a
funny look a couple of weeks ago when I rented the Looney Tunes Collection
(including Daffy Duck in the brilliant Duck Amuck) – but the Bugs and
Daffy ’toons were actually meant to be screened not on kids’ TV but in
theatres showing the latest Hollywood product, part of the once-familiar package
that prefaced movies with cartoon, newsreel and short. More recently, some of
the best American comedies of the past decade have been animated and child-oriented:
take Toy Story, or The Emperor’s New Groove. But there’s a
subtle difference between those cartoons and this one.
Something
like Toy Story lives in the world of kids – not just in featuring toys
but in featuring a secret universe, just as childhood is a world apart. Its
humour is goofy and subversive: as in the old Bugs and Daffy shorts, one
gets a sense of adult sensibility behind sweet childish slapstick. Shark Tale
is exactly the opposite: there’s a thick patina of sophistication but in fact
the tone is crude and shrill, driven by movie in-jokes and hyperactive energy.
Some cartoons – the best ones – create a cosy world kids can feel
comfortable in, then spike it with wit for the parents. This one creates a brash,
busy world that’ll probably make younger kids feel uncomfortable; it’s more
in tune with older kids and teens, which is precisely the idea.
What
we have here is a Mafia comedy set underwater (cue unflattering comparisons with
Finding Nemo). Robert De Niro voices a shark with his trademark mole on
its cheek; director Martin Scorsese voices a puffer-fish – sample line:
“Who’s your Puff Daddy?” – and it’ll take a pretty cine-savvy tyke to
know of Scorsese’s legendary partnership with De Niro, or to realise the
puffer-fish looks like the director (those unmistakable eyebrows). Sharks are
the marine Mafiosi, but De Niro has a son who’s an embarrassment: Lenny –
that’s the kid – is a vegetarian, likes picking flowers and also likes to
dress up as a dolphin. His dad despairs of him but finally accepts him the way
he is, which Moral Majority types in the States have already slammed as code for
telling kids it’s ‘OK to be gay’. Maybe it is, but the Message –
whatever one may think of it – is really no different from the old ‘it’s
OK to be different’ moral Disney have been peddling since Beauty and the
Beast; just a bit more explicit, part of the film’s teenage-angled ‘edginess’.
There’s
a snappy, hip-hop vibe to Shark Tale. Will Smith as our piscine hero
never stops jabbering, with pop songs and montages picking up the pace. A lot of
it revolves around relationships, and little boys who still think girls are
yucky will wonder why Renée Zellweger is so despondent when Will
introduces her as his “best friend” (she is, of course, secretly in love
with him). As in Osmosis Jones a few years ago, there’s quite a few
gags transposing urban sights to an alien, fishy setting (my favourite: the sign
in the red-light district promising “Eels Eels Eels”). And there’s a
plethora of movie in-jokes, which is really the most depressing thing about
modern kidpics: the assumption that the young audience is showbiz-literate, able
to laugh along knowingly when our hero says “Are you not entertained?” (from
Gladiator), or “You can’t handle the truth!” (A Few Good Men)
or “You had me at hello” (Jerry Maguire).