It's not often that a film makes a tongue-in-cheek comment on crime and social injustice by using devices that are generally associated with escapist entertainment.

After the success of the other underwater adventure, "Finding Nemo", "Shark Tale" wades many steps ahead. It has tremendous verve. Here, the humour just flies, or considering the aquatic setting, it floats.

"Shark Tale" is a sharp and chic take on Francis Coppola's "The Godfather". Most of us grew up with Coppola's sinister characters. The shark-don Lino is, of course, the animated underwater version of Coppola's Don Corleone.

That Lino speaks in Robert de Niro's voice adds a delicious undercurrent to this wacky subterranean spice-gurgle of a movie.

The humorous one-liners flow with toothpaste-tube inevitability. And we're frequently caught up in the whirlpool of wackiness. We have to identify every fish in the ocean to know how amusing they are in their animation avatar.

More than the "Godfather" references, the reef references are the ones that cause grief.

As usual, the animation is rich and offers a gamut of expressions that human actors would perhaps find hard to equal.

The prize performance is by Oscar, the underwater dude. That Oscar speaks in Will Smith's voice is again an entirely happy occurrence. It gives the social-climbing wannabe protagonist's character a jaunty, shifty, shallow, yet likeable persona.

The friendship that grows between Oscar and the vegetarian gangster Lenny is heaped with a humorous social message.

The other voices are also excellent in their witticisms. Oscar's two love interests, the simple and sweet Angie (spoken in the satirically sweet voice of Rene Zelleweger) and the femme fatale, Lola (Angelina Jolie), are clichés taken from the textbook corny film.

But what is corny in a feature film is cunningly novel when re-located in an animated feature.

In fact, luscious Lola gets the best line: "Deep down, I'm really superficial."

If the voices constitute nearly 60 percent of the performances, then the other 40 percent of the narrative vigour must be attributed to the directors, Bibo Bergeron, Vicki Jenson, Rob Letterman.

The creators' sheer joy in deriving a new, animated dynamism out of the most precious and time-tested modes of movie-making is apparent.

However, lightness of touch never deserts the narrative. Whether it is the strange and stirring undersea bonding or the digs at media posturing, "Shark Tale" is an animation film with very sharp teeth, perhaps too much so for children.

But then kids ceased to be the target audience for animation films after "The Lion King".