Shark Tale (2004)

Shark Tale

Rental with Snacks

Dreamworks and Disney and Warner Brothers and Pixar, as animation

studios, all have sought to find their own voice in an industry only

recently beginning to be taken as seriously as the work deserves.

Obviously, of these two groups, Disney and Warner are the hand-drawn

titans, and Pixar and Dreamworks are the computer animated sovereigns.

Shark Tale is Dreamworks' latest entry to its spotty but prolific

short history. You might think, oh, it's just another Finding Nemo,

because it's about fish. The good news for Dreamworks is that short

of being set in a reef, the similarities between Oscar's and Marlin's

stories are nil. The good news for Pixar is that they are in no

danger of being overcome by Dreamworks' quality. I hate to deride

any work in this genre - it is a long, painful labor of love over

many years, and the results can be dismissed in an instant. It

always starts with the writing, and there is where Dreamworks fails

its hard working animators.

Oscar (voiced by Will Smith) is a high-dreaming, but not

hard-working, fish who happens to get entangled in the life of a

powerfully connected vegetarian shark (an unrecognizable Jack Black).

The reef is a punny, barnacled New York City, its transmogrification

more like Shrek's faux Hollywood than Osmosis Jone's pun-centered

alternate universe. While you're waiting for something funny to come

out of the action or dialogue, you can enjoy funny visual gags. The

fish are highly anthropomorphized, sass-talking creatures with a

penchant for the latest commercial successes. The main story is

amusing enough, but nothing to write home about.

The better treats are the supporting characters and the throwaway

visual jokes.  I don't mean "Gup" as a pun for the Gap.  I laughed 

harder at an octopus pouring tea - underwater, with all that implies

- than at any of the jokes they told me to laugh at.  I felt pretty 

much the same as in the Shrek sequel - like I was being told "this is

funny" and that I was just supposed to believe it. However, anything

having to do with the inherent difficulties of our human lives being

conducted underwater (tea, paint, fire hydrants) was funny.

Supporting characters Leno (Robert DeNiro) and Sykes (Martin

Scorcese) were great. These actors were really having fun, not

clocking a paycheck. Don't get me wrong, I like Smith and Black, but

these dynamic performers were trapped by their roles (as were the

dames), whereas Deniro and Scorcese were liberated by them.

The voice casting overall was great. Renee Zellweger sounds like a

girl next door and Angelina Jolie sounds like a social climbing vamp.

Go figure. The jellyfish thugs assayed by Doug E. Doug and, yes,

Ziggy freaking Marley) were as cool to look at as to listen to

bickering.

This Shark Tale, however, stripped to the bone, is like 100 other

stories just like it, with the corporate stench of "like this or

else" that has permeated Dreamworks' animation since after Prince of

Egypt. I enjoyed it on a simple level, my companion loved it, and it

was a diverting little movie. It's no Finding Nemo, with its

tumbling, biology-derived humor, genuine characterizations, and

mature-yet-accessible-to-kids writing. Shark Tale has hip hop and

funk numbers, with the older fish dancing as painfully fake as their

real life bodies would, crass commercialism, and forgettable kid

characters in a movie supposedly written for them. Nemo was a cool,

gutsy kid with resources and real child anxieties, vulnerability, and

heroism. It's not fair to compare, but it can't be helped, what with

the fish and all. The animation is good, the performances are good,

but it's between Nemo and this that we can easily draw the

distinction between movie and classic. It's mostly worth seeing, but

it's disposable.

-- 

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These reviews (c) 2004 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to

forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can

check out previous reviews at:

http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the

Online Film Critics Society

http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock

Exchange Brokerage Resource

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X-RT-RatingText: 3.5/5