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Shark Tale (2004, 90 min, PG, animated) ** - Directed by Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, and Rob Letterman, featuring the voices of Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese. Yes, I actually saw “Shark Tale” so that you wouldn’t have to. It’s a good idea for one of those short films that Pixar puts before its real movies. We travel deep under the sea to a fish city that looks a lot like Times Square; like “The Flintstones,” every aspect of our world has been translated into theirs. Whales covered with graffiti get cleaned at the whale wash, the mafia is comprised of sharks, newscaster Katie Couric provides the voice for fish newscaster Katie Current, and fish go to school. It’s amusing for about 18 minutes. Once that wears off, we’re left with a third rate ordinary-guy-owes-money-to-the-mob story, which we don’t care about on its own terms, but only because “hah-hah it’s fish that are doing it!” Again, the humor in this only lasts about 18 minutes. Or maybe it’s just that I’m tired of how every animated film of the last decade has tried to be “Aladdin” all over again, populated not by professional voice actors but by celebrities trying to outdo each other in the pop culture motormouth category. As the ordinary guy, Will Smith is affable and De Niro does his usual thing as the shark mob boss. The real stand-out is Scorsese, as a puffer fish with giant eyebrows. He is given a lot of words and gets them out in a remarkably small amount of time. As with “Shrek” and so many other films from the Pixar school, there’s an ethnocentrism in how we travel to a far-off, alien world only to find that everyone there talks just like they’ve been watching the same television shows that we have. In this case, everything sounds like the contrived rap sensibility of “MTV Jams.” Much of the fun that is to be had is similar to “Finding Nemo,” in which we can sit for minutes at a time, ignoring what’s going on and just watching the strange and lively sea creatures and all the shadowy ocean depths. “Shark Tale” has a rich color scheme and takes enormous pleasure in flying us through schools on the move, in and out of traffic, and through a final chase through the whale wash.
Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall…and Spring (2004, 103 min, R) *** - Directed & written by Ki-duk Kim, starring Yeong-su Oh and Ki-duk Kim. Mellow and calming meditation on the cycle nature sets out for us in life as well as the seasons. We see, at different stages in his life, a boy who grows up alone with a Buddhist master on a tiny island. The boy learns cruelty with animals, lust and possessiveness when a woman visits, and loses his way when he turns his back on the island and the master. Yet, as the master watches with wise old eyes, and as the boy finally returns as a man, we understand that all this must happen to make the boy into who he is meant to be. Director and writer Ki-duk Kim tells his story simply and starkly. |
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| The Net (1995, 119 min, PG13) *1/2 - Directed by Irwin Winkler, starring Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, and Dennis Miller. Is it Grisham or Crichton? Or is it neither? I forget. Either way, it’s an alarmist parable about how computers are out to get us, crossed with a bland “get the disk” thriller about a framed woman (Bullock) on the run from the crooks, the law, and the crooked law. The movie could have had some fun with people robotically intoning “but the computer told me so!” but those scenes are played too seriously. There is some pleasure to be had with Movie O.S., i.e. the computer operating system that does way more than Windows, Linux, and Mac O.S. combined, but still does it in all caps and monochrome. Jeremy Northam, the drawing room charmer of “Gosford Park,” is shamelessly miscast as the one-dimensional heavy and seems embarrassed to be here. I don’t blame him. |
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