Shark Tale Review
by Frankie Paiva (swpstke AT aol DOT com)September 21st, 2004
SHARK TALE * 1/2
2004 – USA
Directors: Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, and Rob Letterman
Featuring the Voices of: Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black Martin Scorsese, and Peter Falk
Reviewed by Frank Paiva
The battle of competing, similar-themed computer animated films from Pixar and Dreamworks goes into round two. Dreamworks' Antz and Pixar's A Bug's Life were evenly matched in 1998, but now it's 2004. Can Shark Tale, the latest Dreamworks undersea offering, match the success or quality of Pixar's Finding Nemo? The answer is a resounding no. While comparing two films simply because they have the same style of filmmaking and setting seems unfair, thus is the misfortune of Shark Tale, which will inevitably draw comparisons to its Nemo counterpart, although I have no idea why. As a standalone release it's missing likable characters, fresh humor, and consistency in tone. It simply isn't worth more than a rental.
Oscar (voice of Will Smith) is the lowest fish on the reef food chain. He cleans the tongues of whales at an old school undersea whale wash. He longs for success and sees an opportunity when a chance encounter finds him with the body of a dead shark hit by an anchor. Soon he becomes a celebrity in the formerly shark-terrified reef, but faces problems with his rising fame and the dead shark's father, who turns out to be the reef's shark Godfather (literally, he's even voiced by Robert De Niro).
Shark Tale hosts a prime pick of vocal talent, with Renee Zellweger playing the wholesome love interest, Angelina Jolie playing the vivacious love interest, Jack Black playing a meek shark, and Martin Scorsese plays a puffer fish that, well, looks suspiciously like Martin Scorsese. I mean the fish even has big, shifty eyebrows. The problem is that none of the characters are that interesting. Oscar's plight is predictable to most moviegoers, and he's too self-involved to make a likable lead. The animation doesn't match up to the vocal energy of the actors. It simply isn't that interesting to look at, even when the animators try to desperately fit in quirky jokes and touches. It is interesting how the entire film takes place underwater, but the actual water only shows up in certain parts of the animation.
The humor in the film is also quite dated. Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" and extended Godfather parodies just aren't funny anymore, and the utilization of racial stereotypes is heavy. Each fish is designed a race of humanity to go along with their species. There are Bob Marley singing Rastafarian jellyfish (one of which is voiced, ironically, by Ziggy Marley), hip black common working fish with afros, and Italian shark gangsters. There's also a bizarre gay subtext that totally falls flat involving a shark "coming out" as a vegetarian. The whole thing will just go over kids' heads. There's no delight, emotion, or wonder to get the young ones or adults involved. There are brief showings of a good film, somewhere under the animation's shiny veneer in the chemistry between the actors, but the stilted dialogue and familiar story get in the way.
Also of note is that this film is to blame for that horrible remake of Rose Royce's "Carwash" you've been hearing on the radio. Why Missy Elliott and Christina Aguilera felt the need to butcher that classic song is beyond me, although Ms. Aguilera does appear, in one of the most bizarre moments in recent cinema, as a singing Rastafarian jellyfish near the end of the film. Horrifying indeed.
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