Produced by Bill Damaschke, Janet Healy, Allison Lyon Segan, Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Starring Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, Tracey Grimshaw, Katie Couric, Michael Imperioli, Doug E. Doug, Peter Falk, Ziggy Marley.

When each new 3-D animation feature from Dreamworks or Pixar defines the latest state-of-the-art CG it’s interesting enough to watch just to see these CG wizards at their technological and creative best. When good scripting and characterisation, smart comedic dialogue and an all-star cast is added, the movie is sure to be a winner. And it is. Shark Tale is funny, technologically brilliant and full of attractive, smart-talking, recognisable characters. The underlying message isn‘t too saccharine either, and works for the most part, for both kids and adults.

One of the most attractive attributes of Shark Tale is that the fishy characters all have the caricatured features of the actors giving them voice. Will Smith’s elegant little cleaner-fish Oscar has his wide grin and pseudo-innocent eyes, angel-fish Angie narrows her eyes just as Renée Zellweger does especially when she’s mad, and the godfather shark Don Lino played by Robert De Niro has his mole. Lola, the part lion-fish, part dragon-fish played by Angelina Jolie, is mesmerisingly seductive, with her lips and her moves. Awesome too are the two Rastafarian jellyfish played by Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley.

The story of Shark Tale brings to mind the fairy tale of the slightly built tailor who, having swiped seven flies at once, advertised this slightly edited feat on a sash saying SEVEN AT ONE BLOW, thus intentionally deceiving everyone he subsequently meets as to his fighting prowess. Cleaner-fish Oscar is a big-noting wannabe who has a lowly job at the bottom (read ‘down-town’) of the Reef as a tongue-scrubber in the Whale Wash. He’s a charming scallywag who owes money, gambles recklessly and has no idea that his sweet work-mate Angie not only has romantic dreams of him but also how much she covers for his slackness at work.

The sudden (and very convenient for Oscar, who was to be lunch) accidental death of a predator shark has Oscar opportunistically declaring himself a ‘Sharkslayer’. The rest of the movie is about Oscar’s rise to the coveted ‘top of the reef’ due to this whopper and his adventures and misadventures with a vegetarian shark named Lenny (Jack Black), beautiful, gold-digging hanger-on Lola (Jolie) and an entrepreneurial puffer-fish called Sykes (Martin Scorsese.)
The interweaving plot that allows Oscar to pull off his deception is that of Lenny the shark, son of the Undersea Godfather, Don Lino. Lenny has the misfortune to be a tenderhearted vegetarian. Don Lino does not easily accept people as they are, especially his son. Lenny’s journey and Oscar’s become intertwined in each getting what they think they want, and somehow all the tangled strands work out.

Themes of social pretence versus self-acceptance and acceptance of others, as well as the importance of true values of love, friendship and loyalty are set in an underwater simulacrum of New York’s Times Square. Superficiality and depth are given literal analogies as Oscar discovers that fame and fortune are as insubstantial as bubbles. By the end of the movie Oscar has presumably discovered not only his true love Angie but also the deeper values of his life and as well has brokered an improbable arrangement with the sharks. And while the children in the audience might buy that harmony now reigns in the undersea kingdom and Oscar will suddenly quit hankering for things he thinks he hasn’t got, adults accompanying those children might need to toss their cynicism and accept that a credible - within its context - ending is not this movie’s strength.

What is most enjoyable in the movie apart from the dialogue and characterisation is the conversion of recognisable daily elements such as the Whale Wash to its colourful fishy equivalent. Adding to the delight of seeing graffiti-ed whales queuing up to be scrubbed is the musical number ‘Car Wash’ (performed by Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott) where choreographed hip-hop turtles do the waxing. There’s an oyster pawning his pearl at a Prawn Shop, real live starfish in the ‘pavement’ celebrating stars such as ‘Mussel Crowe’ and ‘Cod Stewart’, and a woebegone sushi chef with an empty shop opposite neon ‘Coral-Cola’ and ‘Fish King’ signs. The technically brilliant reggae Jellyfish, the odious octopus Luca (Vincent Pastore), Peter Falk’s elder Mafia shark, the big-talking, tinny-voiced shrimp and the ways in which each character spoofs their live-action movie counterparts are all equally great fun. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro’s verbal duelling is a gem and the way Scorsese’s Sykes puffs up when he’s angry, his rising pitch completely undermining his own attempt to be powerful, is another comic coup.

In a way, it’s a shame that Disney’s final 2-D animation feature ever, Home on the Range, released this year, also had big name stars. In every aspect the traditional 2-D effort fades in comparison – not only technically, but in a covertly hostile toned script which masks the nastiness inherent in some of the quips with a syrupy sentimentality and pseudo-Olde Home values. It’s also in the way the movie tries far too hard – opening with a big western musical number meant to sweep us along but which instead immediately left me behind - and the bland cartoon characterisation of the cows voiced by Dame Judi Dench, Roseanne Barr and Jennifer Tilly, all made cheap and rather sad next to the digital CG characterisation of Shrek 2 and Shark Tale. More than this, while some of the latter’s characters are mean, they are who they are without trying to put each other down as they do in Home on the Range. The end result is that the Dreamworks offering is cleaner and far more enjoyable overall, and somewhat of a coffin nail for traditional 2-D animation.

Shark Tale is a tour de force, where some weakness of plot is counterbalanced by technical virtuosity, top name stars, superb characterisation and voicing combined with popular cultural musical icons. Spreading nets even wider to garner local appeal, (although there's the risk of a jarring note) the character of anchorfish Katie Current is voiced by different actual, noted news announcers depending on where it is released - Katie Couric in the US, Tracey Grimshaw in Australia and Fiona Phillips in the UK. A movie assured of a big catch.

© Avril Carruthers, 23rd September 2004