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Shark Tale
This one should have been beached.

Voices: Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorses, Angelina Jolie, Doug E. Doug, Ziggy Marley
Director: Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, Rob Letterman
Screenwriters: Rob Letterman, Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Michael J. Wilson

Reviewed by Chris Ching

Starting with 1989's Little Mermaid, Disney's animated films went through a creative renaissance. Mermaid and the classics that followed - Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King - not only advanced the art of animation but did so through stories of surprising heart and wit. Beauty actually received a Best Picture nomination in 1992 - the first and only animated film to do so.

And then the rot began to set in.

Years of watching their releases effortlessly strike box office gold made Disney lose course artistically, and The House That Walt Built became content in serving up "formula".

Now computer animated films - which since the release of Toy Story in 1995 have continually trounced hand drawn animation commercially and critically - are falling into the same trap.

Case in point: Dreamworks' Shark Tale.

It takes some big cajones to release a fish picture with people's memory of Finding Nemo still so clear, and the shadow of that big fish makes Shark's weak tale that much weaker. Will Smith voices Oscar a lower class fish whose gig as a whale mouth cleaner conflicts with his dream of moving up to the top of the reef. Allying himself with a wuss shark named Lenny (Jack Black), he tricks everyone into believing he's a heroic Shark slayer. In other words, it's A Bug's Life underwater.

The plot's not the only thing stale with this movie. A hallmark of CGI movies has been pop culture references; Shark Tale drowns in them to the point of nausea. Picture a classic like Pinocchio tainted with an abundance of 1940s in-jokes, and you'll get the idea.

Bizarre racism is also at play in Shark Tale. If you took the script out of the water and had it acted out by humans, you'd have a throwback to a blaxploitation movie with its easy stereotypes.

Personally, the worst thing about the movie was Robert De Niro voicing a Godfather Shark which is about the final nail in the once great actor's career coffin. He seems to make two kinds of movies these days: bad mafia movies and CRAP! Yes, Bob I'm talking to you!

As colorful trifle, you could do much worse than Shark Tale, and kids will love it, but I wish Chief Brody would show up and do his duty.

Rating:

(1 1/2 out of 4 stars)

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