“Renée made Angie into someone who was very together, sometimes a little bossy in demanding the best from Oscar, but always completely lovable,” Damaschke agrees. “I think Angie is, in many ways, ultimately the heart of the movie…and she becomes the thing Oscar is most at risk of losing when he tells his big lie.”
Oscar’s big lie is that he took on a shark, single-finned. In truth, the shark was about to make Oscar a hot lunch when fate dropped anchor…on the shark’s head. Seizing the opportunity, Oscar takes credit for killing the shark and is immediately hailed as a “sharkslayer.” Showered with fame and fortune and finally living on top of the Reef, Oscar thinks he has found the good life, until he has to live up to his new title.
When a shark is spotted swimming a little too close for comfort, Oscar’s neighbors dispatch their new “sharkslayer” to take care of the problem. Now Oscar finds himself patrolling the Reef pretending to be hunting for the shark, while actually doing more hiding than seeking. But as it turns out, Oscar has something in common with the shark, whose name is Lenny.
Letterman notes, “Oscar has a secret that he took credit for something he didn’t do, and Lenny has his own deep, dark secret—he’s a vegetarian, which is not a good thing to be when you’re a shark. Together they realize they can help each other out, and they form an unlikely bond.”
Jack Black, who stars as the voice of Lenny, says, “Lenny is a vegetarian shark, not because he doesn’t like the taste of meat, but because he’s a humanitarian—a ‘fishitarian’ in this case. He just doesn’t believe any living thing should be killed. Lenny is a tender soul, which makes him a fish out of water in his world. He doesn’t fit in with the other sharks because he’s sweet and kind, but in the end, he may turn out to be the most powerful shark of all because of his brains and his heart.”
A self-proclaimed “animation junkie,” Black reveals that, had his life taken a different turn, he might actually have been on the other side of the microphone for “Shark Tale.” “I was really into animation from early on. Back in high school, I wanted to be an animator for a while. I’ve always wanted to do cartoons, and I think it’s amazing what they’ve done with computer animation today. It’s a whole new world.”
Jenson says that Black gave the character a dimension that went beyond what was on the page. “The fun-loving side of Jack and, of course, his humor come across in Lenny. But underneath the humor, there is a sweetness and a kind of teddy bearishness to Jack Black that he brought to the character of Lenny, a big, gentle shark who just wants to please his dad.”
Lenny’s dad is no ordinary great white shark; he is the powerful Don Lino, the Godfather of the Reef. Robert De Niro gives voice to Don Lino, which allowed him to spoof one of his own most famous movie roles. “Robert De Niro was a great sport,” Jenson says. “He had absolutely no problem teasing his image to play a classic mobster character. I think he had a lot of fun playing Don Lino as our Godfather and it was a great honor for us just to be on the stage with him, let alone work with him.”
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