Good for slightly sensitive kids

Rating: Null/10 (18 July 2003)

The good news is that the kids liked this movie. My boys are 9 and 12. They aren't particularly macho and they're easily upset by movies. In this way, I suppose they're not very typical. Anyway, they found the level of suspense here very tolerable and they liked the happy ending and positive messages. Curiously, my husband seemed to like it, too.
The bad news, was that I had a hard time with it. Berthold Brecht supposedly once said that the essence of enjoying theater was to suspend one's disbelief so that one could enter into the show. Sigh. I just couldn't do this.
I mean fish eyes face to the side, not forward. They don't have facial expressions. Sharks can't take a vow to stop eating fish. Sharks have to eat other fish to live. And, moreover, fish of one species don't hang out with fish of another species. And, yet, all these belief-streching cute things appear in this movie ... and that's just the start.
OK. I know I need to get past this sort of thing when I watch a cartoon. It's only a cartoon. I guess I'm getting uduly rigid in my old age.

Plus it all seemed kind of trite.
Oh, well. At least my husband and the kids liked it.