Shark Tale (2004)

                            SHARK TALE

                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

CAPSULE: Dreamscape's latest animated film is set

     in a sort of undersea urban environment and should

     entertain the whole family.  The story is familiar

     but the jokes come in a rapid fire.  Rating: low +2

     (-4 to +4) or 7/10

Dreamworks continues their competition with Pixar for the audience

of animated films. They made ANTS when Pixar made A BUG'S LIFE.

Pixar did their fish film with FINDING NEMO and Dreamworks has

followed suit with their fish film, SHARK TALE. Pixar used very

naturalistic artwork capturing the beauty of Australia's Great

Barrier Reef in digital animation and has well-written characters.

Dreamworks's film uses a fantasy urban environment under the sea.

Their characters are intentionally cliched, being essentially film

references. The writing team has ratcheted up the pace of the

jokes to a machine gun staccato. For a story they used as a

framework a story Disney animated back in 1941, "The Reluctant

Dragon" (based on Kenneth "Wind in the Willows" Grahame's story).

The pacifist dragon becomes the vegetarian shark Lenny (voiced by

Jack Black). The timid dragon-slaying human is now a timid shark-

slaying fish Oscar (Will Smith). Other popular stars doing voices

include Robert DeNiro, Renee Zellweger, Anjolina Jolie, Martin

Scorsese, and Peter Falk. Somehow we have come to believe that

animated films need big stars to do the voices.

The film is made palatable for a wide audience not by telling one

story that can be appreciate on many levels, generally the Pixar

approach, but rather by planting a lot of jokes to be enjoyed only

by the adults or perhaps only by fans of classic films. The

distinction might be that Pixar makes family films, Dreamworks

makes children's films that adults can enjoy. Quotes from

familiar films abound. Product placements also are present in

profusion, though always for joke value.

Stay around through the closing credits. There are still more

jokes.

                                        Mark R. Leeper

                                        mleeper@optonline.net

                                        Copyright 2004 Mark R. Leeper

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X-RAMR-ID: 38715
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1323671
X-RT-TitleID: 1136999
X-RT-AuthorID: 1309
X-RT-RatingText: 7/10