Imagine Will Smith as a fish, making Will Smith faces, with Will Smith ears and a Will Smith voice, for an hour and a half. Then add other Hollywood favorites such as Robert De Niro, voicing a mob-boss shark named Don Lino. Jack Black plays one of his sons, a wussy, vegetarian shark. That's Shark Tale
DreamWorks' attempt to find success with an underwater cartoon, in a nutshell.
The plot centers around Oscar, voiced by Will Smith, who wants to become a rich and famous fish. He works in a whale wash, and his get-rich schemes never work. After getting himself into a financial jam, and through a silly turn of events, Oscar is given credit for killing one of Lino's sons. He rises to fame as the Shark Slayer a fish who can protect the reef.
Angelina Jolie -voicing a money-grubbing, slutty fish named Lola -takes interest in Oscar after he makes it big. Oscar is, of course, oblivious to the love of his friend Angie, played by Renée Zellweger.
The sharks, led by De Niro, are mad about the loss of one of their own. Oscar is in a rather large mess.
The movie is flush with pop-culture references, including a memorable Scarface reference by a shrimp. But that wasn't quite enough for me.
I won't give away the rest of the story, but everything turns out happy and morally sound. Despite the closure at the end, however, I wasn't thrilled with the movie. The characters were too similar to the actors who voiced them. Martin Scorsese's blowfish character has the largest eyebrows I have ever seen on a fish. Although he was amusing, there is no way you can forget it is Scorsese -even for a second.
If you take a younger sibling or cousin, as I did, it might be worth it to see Shark Tale. But otherwise, unless you're a cartoon fanatic, I'd let this movie sleep with the fishes.
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Suzanne Wilder
