“Shark Tale” (DreamWorks Animation)
Sometimes you can have just too many big name stars providing voices for an animated film. That was the case in “Antz,” and it was the case again in “Sinbad.” It even hampered the entertainment value of “Prince of Egypt.” Now comes “Shark Tale” with Will Smith, Renee Zellwegger, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorcese heading the vocal cast. Too much! Too many! And the movie suffers for it.
Plus the plot of this movie is a little boring. For a shark movie, it just isn’t biting enough. The script has no teeth. You plod through the story of a fish named Oscar (Smith) who is at best a ne’er do well. His best friend is Angie (Witherspoon), who loves him from afar. They both work at a whale wash and he dreams of moving on up to bigger and better places.
One day he meets two sharks, Lenny (Jack Black) and Frankie (Michael Imperioli). They are sons of the powerful shark Don Lino (Robert DeNiro). While Oscar is talking with them Frankie is accidentally killed. Word gets out that Oscar is a shark killer and he becomes a hero in his hometown reef. This acclaim attracts Lola (Angelina Jolie), a gold digging goldfish.
What this movie needed was some songs to move the action along. And perhaps to take your mind off the fact that the story is slow and the stars are too obvious in their roles. Robin Williams played the Genie in “Aladdin” but he submerged himself so much in the role that we forgot who he really was.
The animation in the film is super but we are used to super animation by now. What we needed was something to make this movie different, and we didn’t get it. It is a good film in a series of great animated movies. “Finding Nemo” was about sharks too but it had something extra.
“Shark Tale” will be successful as all animated films are, but it won’t be a monster smash like “Nemo.” Word of mouth on this fish tale is not going to be that good.
I scored “Shark Tale” a fish out of water 5 out of 10.
