The Fresh Fish of Bel Water

Rating: 4/10 (18 February 2005)

A poor urban guy by a series of chance occurrences becomes rich and famous, only to face an identity crisis which brings him back to his urban roots. Throw in a love interest, a few homie punchlines and Will Smith and you essentially have an episode of the wildly successful Fresh Prince of Bel Air TV Show. But this is no TV show, you just paid to watch Dreamwork's take on Disney's Finding Nemo. The comparisons will undoubtedly arise between these two underwater computer animated movies, and it's safe to say that Nemo blows this Shark out of the water.
Let me get straight to the gripes. The cool factor of being underwater is that the dynamics of underwater locomotion. Let's face it, even Ian Thorpe isn't all that graceful with his splashing around in the water compared to a fish. And this is the source of my first gripe, these "fish" tend to just FLY around with no illusion of underwater movement. They could have been airborne humans. And they have HANDS! And they build building underwater with glass, bricks, concrete, asphalt, metal, and elevators! WHY does a fish need an ELEVATOR?? It's supposed to be a coral reef! And the Whale Wash uses suds and jets of water! That just doesn't make any sense.
OK logical gaps are usually explained away as "suspension of belief" so let's look past that and get to the characters. I find it an odd choice that when depicting fish, that they look more like humans and less like fish. They have arms and legs that are supposed to be fins. And their faces! Really that fish's face looks exactly like Will Smith including the crazy ears. Did they do this just to get away from being too much like that other fish movie? However, I do give kudos to the sharks and the 2 reggae jellyfish guys. They look awesome.
Now where this movie truly falls apart is the story. There's no reason why we should like Mr. Smith. He's a user, a poser and only at the brink of his best friend being killed does he "take action" ... which of course works out marvelously netting him even more fame and fortune. Honestly, this whole "Shark Slayer" thing was just a terrible plot device. Terrible. There's just none of the zing in this show. No magic, no charm. It just plunges through it's inane story to the end, not looking back to see if anyone really cares. This is a wrecking ball of computer animated movies.
Now that's not to say that this film has no redeeming qualities. Kids would love it as my wife did. For me the movie was saved by some great supporting characters. Jack Black plays a genuinely lovable vegetarian shark in dolphin drag. Robert De Niro's mafia kingpin shark was hilarious, bringing to mind his comedy shtick from Meet the Parents. Simply great. Finally the two jellyfish guys, Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley, are spot on funny. Off the wall and well thought out. If only the rest of the movie could reproduce hilarity of these guys.
Really this movie could have been so much better. Shame on you Dreamworks for trying to cash in on an animated underwater movie that's just like Nemo but not. All the big name voice actors in Hollywood can't save this one. Something smells fishy here, throw this one back.