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Movie Review: 'Shark Tale'
By Hap Erstein

Palm Beach Post Film Writer

Friday, October 01, 2004

Somewhere in the three-year development of DreamWorks Animation's fin-and-gill comic action feature Shark Tale, the studio reportedly changed course and began aiming its movie at youngsters.

Chances are it was as Pixar's Finding Nemo began receiving its tidal wave of acclaim.

Regardless of when or why it happened, this latest computer-generated movie from the producers of Shrek is now a curiously uneven hybrid. Its lesson-layered story is strictly kids' stuff that will probably not hold grown-up interest. On the other hand, it is stuffed with cinematic references and voiced by Hollywood celebs eagerly making fun of their screen images, with humor that will fly over the heads of tykes.



At its core, it is the saga of two fish, each of whom harbors a secret. Blowhard Oscar (Will Smith) from the 'hood is a boastful little bottom-feeder who yearns to live high on the reef. When a vicious shark is accidentally killed in his vicinity, Oscar seizes the opportunity for fame and fortune and proclaims himself a "shark-slayer."

Meanwhile, the dead shark's brother Lenny (Jack Black) wants acceptance from his carnivorous clan, but he is a closet vegetarian, too meek and sensitive to swallow even the lowly shrimp in a seafood cocktail.

Maybe, just maybe, Oscar and Lenny can team up and bolster each other's reputation.

From the proverbial mob threat of "sleeping with the fishes," it is a small leap to a school of sharks patterned after the Mafia. And once you get Robert De Niro to agree to voice the godfather shark, Don Lino, who just happens to have a cheek mole, you swim with the idea, right?

Even better is Goodfellas director Martin Scorsese as a bushy-eyebrowed, motor-mouthed puffer fish. The characters all look anthropomorphically cartoonish, but that allows the animators to capture the features of the voice talent on the fish faces.

Well, it is hard to see Renee Zellweger in angel fish Angie, Oscar's long-suffering, likes-him-for-what-he-is sweetheart. But you simply have to spy the oversized lips on vamp fish Lola to anticipate the voice of Angelina Jolie. To guarantee lots of plugs for the movie on TV's Today Show, anchorfish Katie Current is played by Katie Couric.

Assuring that tots are not left out of the humor completely, there are plenty of lame nautical product puns. Like Coral-Cola, Kelpy Kreme doughnuts and the casual clothing store, The Gup. Wink, wink.

The animation is good, but definitely not Nemo quality. What set Nemo's visuals apart was the artful suggestion of the world underwater. In contrast, Shark Tale's characters seem to be floating on nothing but air, though there is an impressive effect when paint is dispersed in the sea.

Since Shark Tale lays on thick the message of tolerance for all creatures, no matter how oddly they behave, we might as well practice a little tolerance toward this movie. It is no Finding Nemo, but maybe it is unfair to expect it to measure up to that Oscar winner.

There are things to enjoy in Shark Tale, regardless of your age, just not 90 minutes' worth.

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"Shark Tale" is a bubbly concoction with a dream cast of voice actors, including Will Smith, Jack Black, Renee Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorcese and many more.

What DreamWorks does better than any other animation company is warp the real world through the prism and create a whole new world -- like the parody of Disney in "Shrek."

In "Shark Tale," DreamWorks invents an underwater underworld in a Times Square-like reef where the Gap is the Gup, Coca-Cola is Coral-Cola and the car wash is a whale wash.


Photo: Dreamworks SKG


"Shark Tale" borrows only from the best -- it combines the menace of "The Godfather," the soapy fun of "Car Wash" and the optimism of "The Wizard of Oz" to tell the story of Oscar (Smith), a tiny cleaner fish at the Whale Wash whose mouth often gets ahead of his brain and who dreams of reaching the top of the reef, where he can be a somebody, instead of a nobody.

Angie (Zellweger) is a beautiful and sweet angelfish who has been in love with Oscar for a long time, even though he can't see it.


Photo: Dreamworks SKG

Meanwhile, on the bad side of town, the Shark mob plots, and its godfather, Don Lino (De Niro), is grooming his two sons to take over the family business. One son, Frankie (Michael Imperioli), is an instinctual predator, but a bit dumb. The second son, Lennie (Black), has a deep secret -- he is a pacifist and a vegetarian.

Through a series of mishaps, Oscar becomes known as a shark slayer and starts living high on the reef. Only Lennie knows the truth and uses it to convince Oscar to hide him away from his family so he can start a whole new life as a peaceful, jovial shark.

"Shark Tale" is a major crowd pleaser with its lovable heroes, its hiss-worthy villains and plenty of musical numbers that will get kids up and dancing. The retro "Car Wash" song is joyful fun that also helps along the plot.

Kids will love this movie, but there is plenty of fun for adults, too. Many references to cultural icons may not register with the younger set, but will delight the older kids. The Rastafarian jellyfish henchmen (Doug E. Doug, Ziggy Marley) pop with fun and inventive computerized animation -- sort of like Jamaican Abbott and Costello.


Photo: Dreamworks SKG

I loved the way the animators captured the actors' features and mannerisms when creating the look and interplay of the fishy denizens of the deep. For example, Scorcese plays the whale wash's owner, Sykes, a puffer fish with big, hairy eyebrows. Some of the most inspired moments of the movie come when Sykes faces off with the Don. Scorcese and De Niro are back together again -- but this time as bickering sea creatures.

"Shark Tale" is more than an underwater cartoon. It is a joyful way of teaching kids (and parents, too) that they can shoot for the stars, just as long as they also recognize the wonderful things around them and that being different isn't a bad thing, it's just different.

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The marketing campaign leading up to "Shark Tale," Dreamworks' new grab for your child's mindshare -- sorry, Dreamworks' new digitally animated entertainment -- seems more relentless than usual. There are TV spots, Burger King toys, video games across all platforms, and, if I'm not mistaken, the great white shark seen swimming off Naushon Island has the studio logo tattooed on its fin. Maybe the folks who gave us "Shrek" want to avoid confusion with a certain Oscar-winning Pixar movie set under the sea. Or perhaps they want to build on it; I recently overheard a child ask his mother, "Is that the sequel to `Finding Nemo'?"

No, kid, it's not -- it's "Finding Nemo" gutted of all its charm and remixed for urban hit radio. "Shark Tale" is a film calculated to give us a good time, and it's the calculation that spoils the fun. Where "Nemo" was clever, soulful, and marvelous to look at, "Tale" is manic and surprisingly ugly, with a script that leans on the shallowest aspects of hip-hop street cred while pimping for corporate product placement at every turn. Yes, your children will probably enjoy it, but do you really want to feed them more of the throwaway crud culture they get every single day?

The setting's an ocean reef made over to look like a submerged Times Square, complete with a red-and-white "Coral Cola" billboard and live news feed featuring Katie Current (voiced by Katie Couric). Will Smith lends his rubbery vocal talents to the role of Oscar, a lowly employee at a whale-wash run by a pufferfish named Sykes (filmmaker Martin Scorsese, dithering amusingly). A schemer who dreams of making it rich and living in gold-chained glory "at the top of the reef," Oscar is too starry-eyed to see that fellow employee Angie (Renee Zellweger) is in love with him.

Instead, Oscar bets a wad on a seahorse race and loses, ending up in the hole to Sykes's bosses, a shark mob overseen by Don Lino (Robert De Niro). The Don has two sons, tough-guy Frankie (Michael Imperioli, Christafuh from "The Sopranos" himself) and wimpy vegetarian embarrassment Lenny (Jack Black). Through a "Brave Little Tailor"-style misunderstanding, Oscar becomes renowned throughout the reef as "The Shark Slayer," all the while hiding Lenny from his family and the rest of the fish population.

A couple of Italian-American organizations, the Columbus Citizens Foundation and the Order Sons of Italy in America, have publicly censured Dreamworks for rolling out the old mobster stereotypes in "Shark Tale." That's the least of the film's problems. Personally, I'd think African-American audiences would be insulted by the way "Tale" presents Oscar as a slick, obnoxious cartoon "playa." Parents might be put off by the gang of adorable little-kid fishes who run around tagging graffiti on the walls (excellent role modeling, Dreamworks!). And everyone should be properly creeped out by the corporate logos all over the place, starting with the bag of Krispy Kremes that lands prominently on Angie's desk.

The Writers Guild, for its part, might want to file a protest over a screenplay that substitutes lazy media cross-referencing for actual dialogue. At one moment of shark-killing triumph, Oscar says, in succession, "Are you not entertained? You can't handle the truth! You had me at `Hello,' " and we're supposed to surmise -- what? That the writers have seen the same movies we have? "Shark Tale" takes the punning, pop-culture-crazy wit of "Shrek" and dumbs it down until it's just another way to sell, and the only upside is that the whole thing will be out of date by Christmas.

Smith overdoes his role, but the rest of the all-star cast is fine, and there are individual laughs to be had, like atolls in a barren stretch of ocean. Sykes's henchmen, two Rasta jellyfish played by Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley, are the offbeat highlight of the film, even if it's possible from under water to hear Marley's dad rolling in his grave. It's also cute that many characters share physical attributes with the actors voicing them -- De Niro's mole, Scorsese's eyebrows, Smith's ears (morphed into fins here). This still doesn't keep them from looking like creepy little mutants. Angelina Jolie's supposedly va-va-va-voom vamp Lola is one scary piece of sushi, and the appearance of Missy Elliott and Christina Aguilera as singing fish during the end credits may have put me off seafood for good.

The marquee value alone will probably make the film a hit, but "Shark Tale" is an ick-thyological experience nevertheless. It's a movie so instantly disposable you could wrap it in yesterday's newspaper.