It's not fair to compare this to "Finding Nemo." Now "Jabberjaw" on the other hand...

Rating: 4/10 (6 November 2004)

The best moment of "Shark Tale" comes in the beginning, when the little boy in the DreamWorks Animation logo casts his fishing line out from the moon and sends the hook with a worm on it down to the sea. Unfortunately it serves as a cue for one of the movie's problems  when two sharks come along, one humming John Williams' shark motif from "Jaws" to the disgust of the other, and the first one says "Hey, it's our theme song," we're supposed to think it's clever. It's not  it's obvious, and it's also representative of the movie's fondness for riffing off pop culture aspects - something "The Simpsons" also does, but it also does far more than this movie does. This laziness is so prevalent throughout the movie that the overall effect is of something that's computer-generated in more ways than one.
The story is dull, clichéd and predictable  it's shocking that such an impressive cast was convinced to bring life to a script that's on a level with "Fish Police," with its endless bad fish-related puns and dreary plotting. Come to think of it, the voice cast is another problem; there used to be a time when animated movies didn't feel the need to plaster the names of the voice actors, whether known or unknown, on the posters and in the trailers but even some of the TV spots for "Shark Tale" featured the live actors during the recording sessions, making it feel even more like a corporate concoction than it already is (and why did the producers gather such an impressive cast and then give them practically nothing to do?). The characters Smith, Jolie, DeNiro, and company are voicing aren't a help either  unlike "Finding Nemo" (I know I said it's not fair, but the point has to be made), we're denied anyone to give a toss about because they're nearly all stereotyped ciphers (especially the Jamaican jellyfish voiced by Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley), with Will Smith proving that even in animation he has to hog the limelight... if any character here is the star, it's Jack Black's fey shark (who practically has "gay" stamped on his fins). Just to add to the irritation, the movie's commercial instincts all but override the storyline  it often plays like an extended TV spot for its soundtrack (and both the songs and Hans Zimmer's score are nothing to write home about), especially with the presence of Missy Elliott and Christina Aguilera in fish and jellyfish form performing their appalling version of "Car Wash"  as if the live-action forms weren't repellent enough already.
With its sledgehammer winks to adults (although the newspaper ad for a horror movie called "The Hook" modeled on DreamWorks' version of "The Ring" and casting Peter Falk and two cast members of "The Sopranos" as mob sharks is almost okay) and the overall feeling of a bad '80s TV cartoon dressed up in 2004 silver screen trimmings, "Shark Tale" has no chance of being included as one of the three nominees for Best Animated Feature if there's justice in this world. And who decided to include British morning TV irritant Fiona Phillips on the UK release print (Fiona replaces Katie Couric as the voice of on-the-spot reporter Katie Current, which pretty much removes any possible point to the fish's name)? Fiona Phillips and Christina Aguilera have no business being on the same credit roll as Martin Scorsese and Renee Zellweger.