Beautiful animation, superb sound track, but only a so-so story.

Rating: Null/10 (13 February 2005)

The past six years or so have spawned a new genre of animated movie, the super realistic, super sharp, almost 3-D computerized animation. So any movie like this one, "Shark Tale", will automatically get compared to all the others in the genre. For me it falls near the bottom of that heap. Not that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. But the story itself, of a vegetarian shark, offspring of a shark 'Don' who wants him to be able to kill like all the other sharks, isn't very interesting. It is there just to provide cute and mostly funny episodes involving the fish that live in an underwater community that looks amazingly like Times Square in Manhattan. But the animation and colors are beautiful, and watching the movie just to marvel at that aspect is enough for most of us. My advice, watch it for the beauty, and don't worry about the story itself.
The voice acting features quite a fine cast, including Will Smith as Oscar, who works at a whale wash business, and whose job is to clean the tongue. How low can you get?? Robert De Niro is Don Lino, the old papa shark. Renée Zellweger is Angie, who works at the whale wash also, is sweet on Oscar but doesn't get much attention. Jack Black is Lenny, the young shark who can't bring himself to eat anything alive. The story is two-fold -- how does Lenny get acceptance from his father, and how does Oscar come to discover true love?
Angelina Jolie is the sexy Lola, and Today Show hostess Katie Couric does a good turn as Katie Current, a news reporter. Not much of a stretch, but she does a fine job. Other voices of note include Martin Scorsese and Peter Falk.