Shark Tale

Shark Tale (Directors: Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, Rob Letterman)

Director Bergeron worked on a hand-drawn Dreamworks toon, The Road to El Dorado. Jensen worked on Shrek. This is Letterman's first big animation job. He also helped write the script.

Dreamworks has officially cornered the smart-ass market, what with the overrated Shrek films, Antz, and NBC's prime time animated program "Father of the Pride." Someone needs to tell me when the wink-wink, nudge-nudge on almost every joke became something America clamored for--like as if the knowing nod to pop culture references became the most hilarious form of comedy going. Everyone seems to jump all over Shrek for being so smart, edgy--but there's not one bit of fucking soul to be had. Not one bit.

Shark Tale continues the tradition, and it's not really a shark tale. The main character is a tropical fish named Oscar (Will Smith) who dreams of being higher up in the reef where he's a somebody. He works at a "whale wash" headed by a blowfish named Sykes (Martin Scorsese), and his business answers to a shark gang headed by Don Lino (Robert De Niro), who hopes to pass the torch to his sons, Frankie (Michael Imperioli of "The Sopranos") and Lenny (Jack Black). Oscar owes money to Sykes, and after blowing the money he intended to pay on a seahorse race (get it...get it?) he gets tied up a "tortured" by Sykes's jellyfish henchman with Jamaican accents (Doug E. Doug, Ziggy Marley). At this point in the story, we have been informed of Lenny's aversion to eating meat--you could just as well say he's gay. Everything about it, from the shame to the other characters' reactions, point to that being the real problem. So, during the captivation scene, Frankie is trying to teach Lenny how to be a meat-eater, and after it's all over, an anchor hits Frankie in the head and kills him, and once the dust settles in this scene, Oscar looks like a shark-killer. This makes him a celebrity and his dreams come true, despite the lies and the trouble it will cause.

There's a love triangle involving secret-admirer Angie (Renee Zellweger) and a gold-digger named Lola (Angelina Jolie) which is only a subplot to the shark-gangster tale that everyone involved with the film wants to make. And believe me, every single movie reference known to man that can be done is done. There was only one, for true absurdity, that made me laugh--the only laugh I really had.

In Finding Nemo, there are so many characters who are worth watching, adding depth to the story at hand. Even the most minute characters who have one line or one action add laughs. It, like all of the Pixar features, have some heart--it makes the film a more satisfying experience. In Shark Tale, there's so much thrown at you that yes, occasionally there is something amusing--anybody can throw hundreds of jokes out and at least one or two will hit, it's just the law of averages. The story just isn't credible, either. Once a story crumbles, you can spout as many jokes as possible--the foundation for jokes is lost, and since most of these jokes rely on other facets of pop culture to be funny, this movie will be about as vital twenty years from now as an open jar of mayonnaise.

Movies like Toy Story, Nemo, Monsters, Inc., and A Bug's Life never resorted to these cheap tactics. They had writers who came up with funny situations involving the story they were telling. With the Dreamworks line of animated films, they become indistiguishable from one another as each try to make their mark skewering everything contemporary that is lying around. When legendary animation god Brad Bird unleashes The Incredibles on November 5, we will see the ingenuity of his work married with a company like Pixar completely destroy this underwater trash--which as of this writing has made $94,000,000 and is going to make over a hundred million and more by the time it's over. Maybe Dreamworks isn't dumb, it is a niche market they occupy, but we won't be talking about their films in the distant future.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about here? There's nothing more grating for me to see a comedy where the performers and writers let you know that they're smart and hip, instead of just letting it be. Why is Airplane! funny to me, and not Shark Tale? In Airplane!, no one lets you know that there's a joke. Everything is played straight. That's what bothers me about these films.