SHARK TALE

 

Title: Shark Tale

Media: Movie

Genre: Animated, Kids & Family, Action, Comedy

Rating: PG

Creator: DreamWorks

Edition Reviewed: 2005 Full-Screen Single-Disc DVD

Nine years ago, there was a huge fish craze. Finding Nemo had captured the minds and the imagination of a nation, who decided they couldn't get enough fish-themed stuff. Clownfish sales skyrocketed. Fish-themed nurseries popped up in every house with a toddler. Aquariums became even more popular tourist destinations. And DreamWorks wanted in on this fishy, money-making goodness by releasing their own fish movie, Shark Tale.

 

I was around thirteen to fourteen years old when this movie came out. I wanted to see it so badly. There weren't a lot of fish movies back then that weren't horror movies or chock-full of mermaids, and I was excited that a new one was already on the market! Never did get to see it, though; my parents put their feet down and told me “no." I was too much of a good girl to sneak out and see it myself. So I simply did without.

 

Nine years later, I finally watch it. And all I can say is, “Thank you, mom and dad, for not letting me see this.”

The jellyfish on the right is mirroring my expression towards this film.

Shark Tale is a 2004 release that follows the aquatic adventures of unlikely buddies, Oscar and Lenny. Oscar is a cleaner wrasse who works down at the whale wash, scrubbing tongues the way his old man did long ago. Oscar is in gigantic debt, and needs to pay off 5000 clams to his boss...or else! Oscar loses the money due to gambling it all away, and is experiencing the “or else!” part of the equation when he meets Lenny.

Lenny is the son of Don Lino, who is the Godfather of the sea. Don Lino is ashamed of his son because he cannot understand why he is so … different. He isn't a cold-blooded carnivore like his brother, Frankie. Lenny is a kind, sweethearted young soul who would rather make friends than eat fish. This does not help the image of the shark mafia. To remedy this, Don Lino sends his sons out hunting in hopes that Frankie will teach Lenny how to be a real shark. That is when they meet Oscar.

Lenny tries to save Oscar, who is too scared to move. Frankie rushes in for a tasty snack-wrasse (I apologize for the pun) when he is crushed by an anchor and killed. When Frankie's body is discovered, the only other fish around is...Oscar. Oscar claims that he was the one who killed the vicious shark, netting himself the title of “Sharkslayer” and all the fame that comes with it.

Hilarity ensues.

 

Oh, where to start with this one? Because I am an optimist who can find merit in most things, let's discuss the positive aspects of the film first.

Well...Lenny is a bundle of laughs. Jack Black might be the only actor in the film who plays a character other than himself: he turns Lenny into one of the most adorkable sharks to have ever hit the big screen. But that isn't to say Lenny is only an adorkable shark. There are scenes that show he can be as cunning, wily, and strong as the rest of the sharks in the mafia. He ends up becoming one of the most enjoyable characters in the movie simply because he isn't a carbon-copy of his actor or a cut-and-paste stereotype. He's a ditz, but he's smart. He's weird, but he's sweet. Kudos to you, Lenny, for being a three-dimensional character. Wish you hadn't been wasted on this film.

Some of the other characters are pretty fun to watch, even if they are just their actors in fish costumes. Robert de Niro and Martin Scorsese seem to be aware of what sort of movie they're both in and ham it up as Don Lino and Sykes. Their scenes together are fun to watch because of the air of medium awareness that follows them: they know they're in a crappy movie, and we know that they've worked together in the film business for years. The jellyfish henchmen twins, Ernie and Bernie, are also fun characters. Doug E Doug and Ziggy Marley not only infuse them with the type of camaraderie only twin jellyfish could have, but they make them equal parts goofy and despicable. The rest of the actors have their self-parodying moments, but these scenes are nowhere near as enjoyable as these notable characters.

I'll give the movie bonus points for including some not-so-common species in the film. It's not every day that a blue streak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus), a Commerson's dolphin, (Cephalorhyncus commersonii), and a Leopard shark (Triakis semifasciata) make an appearance in a movie that isn't a documentary. And that's only a brief example!

The soundtrack's nice.

That's about it.

Look at them.  I mean, really look at them.

Now for the negative points. Hope you're comfortable, because this might take awhile.

Let's start with the animation. Namely, how the water is animated. Think about the last time you went swimming, whether it was in a lake or a pool or what have you. Think about how light filtered through the water, casting beautiful wave-like patterns on light on the floor. Think about how the space further away from you was just a mystical haze. Think about how pieces of sediment danced through the water as you swam past.

None of that is in this movie. None of the things that make water so distinct from air show up in this movie. Which makes it seem as though the characters are just hovering in mid-air rather than swimming through water.

This wouldn't be a problem if the characters weren't already wedged deeply in the uncanny valley. All of the fish have humanoid faces that make them look less like fish and more like nightmares. The eyes don't have a lot of expression behind them, and their lip-sync is slightly off at times. All of this cobined with the way they just hover in nothingness creates an illusion of something that is pretending to be alive ... but isn't. The character who gets hit the hardest with this is Katie Current, the journalist. Her dead eyes will haunt me forever.

Speaking of characters, so many of them are just uninteresting. Oscar is an unlikeable jerk who gambles off his best friend's most valuable possession simply because he wants to become a millionaire, lies to get his way, takes pride in his mistaken role as a murderer, and acts like hes stuck in the 90's. The jellyfish twins' stupidity can get pretty annoying (and this is coming from someone who liked them). Even the undersea mafia can make one's eyes roll in annoyance, such as the sissy orca or the gassy leopard shark.

And I hope you aren't watching this movie in hopes of seeing some strong female characters. Angie exists to pine after Oscar and be a generic love interest/damsel in distress. The only other female character (who means anything to the plot) is Lola, a lionfish who exists to create a love triangle and provide eye candy for the audience (and perhaps it's just me, but...a sexy fish?! What were they thinking?!). In other words, the female characters in this movie exist to be love interests for the male hero and do nothing else. Their very existences revolve around Oscar. Great step forward for creating strong heroines in animated movies, DreamWorks!

 

The movie relies on pop culture references, toilet humor and "fish-doing-human-things" jokes (instead of building characterization) to carry it through. The scenes where they do attempt to add sentimentality feel forced, and end up falling flat. The audience has no reason to care about the heroes, after all. The plot itself builds on a lot of classic scenarios (the small town boy with big town dreams, the liar revealed, the odd duck son and his disapproving father, the basic plot of Dragonheart, etc) without playing with them at all, making every “plot twist” obvious from the start.

It all adds up to a stinking pile of movie muck.

Lola has one line that describes this movie perfectly: “Deep down, I'm superficial.” The movie splashes about happily in its simplicity and lack of charm or characterization. It tries to add in emotional scenes to prove that it has heart, but it doesn't work. Lenny's adorable escapades aren't enough to save the film, though he tries his hardest. In short, Shark Tale was a mediocre movie that has not aged well through this decade.

 

At the end of it all, I can only look back on my young teenage self, shake my head at her in disbelief, and wonder why the heck she wanted to see Shark Tale.

Addendum: the DVD I used for reviewing purposes contained an exclusive short called Club Oscar.  The short consisted of the characters dancing in a nightclub. That was it. The best part, however, was that they had a credit for story. FOR STORY.