An anthropomorphic Nazi-fighting fish? Count Richard Linklater in. (Minus the Nazis, probably.) 

Last year, we wrote about the tantalizing stupefying prospect of Hollywood remaking the anthropomorphic fish comedy The Incredible Mr. Limpet as a vehicle for Zach Galifianakis, an actor who admittedly has a superficial catfish-like quality. At the time, director Kevin Lima was attached to the project, having melded live-action and animation to great success—financially, if not creatively—with the Disney movie Enchanted. Lima has since abandoned his post, and the Los Angeles Times reports that his replacement is Richard Linklater, whose innovations with rotoscope animation in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly made him ideal for the job. The question remains: How faithful will Linklater be to the original? His 2005 remake of Bad News Bears suggests the answer is “quite,” but The Incredible Mr. Limpet itself suggests otherwise. Galifianakis may well mimic Don Knotts’ offbeat, aw-shucks performance as a nerdy bookkeeper who longs to be a fish and fight Nazis. (A wish the universe grants him when he falls into the Coney Island waters and turns into a bespectacled, animated, Navy-assisting fish.) But The Times states the obvious: This is a story that must be updated. But how? Can terrorists be fought by sea? Somali pirates, maybe? Whatever the case, Linklater seems like the right man to rescue this project from dubiousness, and it’s not as if the original set a high bar.