The biggest marketing excuse i've seen in a while.

Rating: 4/10 (28 May 2015)

Shark Tale is one of those movies that you can tell is just a thinly veiled excuse to make money. The problems with the film are pretty obvious. The film has all these big names that you know they only got to draw in big audiences, and there are a bunch of really bad puns. I'm not even kidding about that. The puns in this movie make A Bee Movie look funny. Oscar (Will Smith) is a cool hip hop fish in the underwater city, works at a "whale wash", and he's being admired by his coworker Angie (Renee Zellweger). But not all is well for Oscar as he owes money to his boss Sykes (Martin Scorsese) and he can't pay it off. Well Oscar inadvertently meets a vegetarian shark named Lenny (Jack Black) after it looks like Oscar killed Lenny's brother Frankie (Michael Imperioli). This is bad news because Lenny's father is the shark mafia boss Don Lino (Robert De Niro). Oscar and Lenny then make it look like Oscar killed Lenny making him the shark slayer so Lenny can run away and start a new life. Spoiler alert! We have to go through the liar revealed story again. I understand why they put that in kid's films but it get's old and predictable. But the real problem with Shark Tale is the idea. The story isn't done very well and you know right from the get go that this was an excuse to make money and throw in some pop culture references. Think about it. When you see the characters, you don't see the characters you just see the actors playing them. You now they choose them because of the names and nothing else. Smith's character is also annoying and to be honest a bit of a jerk. There are some moments when the film is enjoyable, particularly with De Niro and Scorsese, but even here you can't shed the light that you are watching De Niro and Scorsese. Honestly I really don't recommend it.