Nicholas Thurkettle

Originally posted 1/5/05

Shark Tale
Directors: Vicky Jensen, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman
Writers: Rob Letterman, Michael J. Wilson
Producers: Bill Damaschke, Janet Healy, Allison Lyon Segan
Featuring the voices of: Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese

So it’s an odd quibble to make in an animated kids’ movie that there is no good reason a fish should need an elevator to get to a top floor apartment. He couldn’t swim up? But I am just picky enough to think that the reason we watch movies set in another world is to bathe our imaginations in the unfamiliar, or something which is familiar but skewed in a unique way.

In Shark Tale, a harmless, diverting, but ultimately less than memorable animated comedy, fish, sharks and other creatures of the deep wear sunglasses, listen to walkmen, make their own TV shows, and dream of owning surround sound systems. Another odd quibble would be how a surround sound system works underwater, but I’m starting to come off as too much the grump.

Maybe what I am asking is, why is this story set underwater at all? Its trappings are the trappings of the human world – the sharks sit in booths at a restaurant and eat off of plates, fish use cell phones to communicate. Most of the characters spend their time upright rather than horizontally. Why did they have to be fish?
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Originally published 7/15/2004

I, Robot
Director: Alex Proyas
Writers: Screen story by Jeff Vintar, screenplay by Jeff Vintar and Akiva Goldsman, suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book
Producers: John Davis, Topher Dow, Wyck Godfrey, Laurence Mark
Stars: Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, Alan Tudyk, James Cromwell, Bruce Greenwood

The Dr. Susan Calvin I knew never wore leather pants, or blasted away at hordes of attacking robots with a big futuristic gun, or took gratuitous showers. I never imagined her being as photogenic as Bridget Moynahan, either. But comparisons like that between this big expensive summer movie and Isaac Asimov’s I Robot, a thought-provoking compendium of short stories, are a deadly trap. Best to stay away.

What we get with this admittedly exciting, visually-rich, action-packed movie has almost nothing to do with any of the story material from that book – although a sequence in a robot maintenance facility with an unaccounted-for extra occupant is a clear nod to the story/chapter “Little Lost Robot”. What the filmmakers have done is plug a few character names, like Lanning and Robertson, and of course, Dr. Susan Calvin, into an explosion-filled scenario. But more importantly, they used the 3 Laws of Robotics, one of Asimov’s most enduring creations.
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