It Has Its Moments, But It's A Weak Effort From DreamWorks

Rating: Null/10 (22 April 2010)

DreamWorks Animation had its glory when "Shrek 2" became the highest grossing animated film back in 2004. They had topped the previous record set by "Finding Nemo", which was released a year before that. DreamWorks pretty much assumed that "Shrek 2" was going to outdo the record set by "Nemo". From what I've heard, this fish film only took around 2 years to make. "Shark Tale" might've obviously been conjured up to see if it can be huge since "Nemo" was huge, being something like a cash-in. Before "Finding Nemo" hit theaters, it was expected to be a disappointment due to tepid test screenings. When this film began pre- production, the title was going to be "Sharkslayer", and this was prior to Nemo's release date. Now DreamWorks spent 3 years on "Shrek", and it was a great film. DreamWorks spent more than 2 1/2 years working on "Shrek 2" and it turned out to be a good sequel (Not as good as the first in my opinion). If "Shark Tale" took only 2 years to make, then something tells me this film was obviously rushed. Perhaps DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg saw that their big rival scored a massive hit with "Nemo", so thus "Shark Tale" was rushed to meet a release date not too long after "Nemo". According to some sources, animation production took only 7 months. "Finding Nemo" took 3 years. Recent Pixar films take about a year of animation production. This shows that "Shark Tale" was definitely rushed during production and it was probably altered to be potential box office gold. (The all-star cast prove this and 2003-2004 pop culture jokes prove this)
Don't get me wrong, "Shark Tale" is not the worst thing ever. It's not a rip-off of "Nemo" either. It's not very good, definitely. It has it's moments. The story is a muddle. Basically Oscar, the main fish, is a nobody and he wants to be seen as someone important. Oscar starts a big white lie that he is a shark slayer after his encounter with Lenny, a vegetarian shark ("Finding Nemo"'s sharks, anyone?) from a mafioso-like family of sharks. Throughout the film, we basically see how long he keeps that lie. It all leads up to a somewhat absurd climax. But hey, I don't think this was intended to be some animated classic like "Nemo" was.
On the positive side, "Shark Tale" has some funny moments. However, a lot of it is dated. All of these pop culture jokes and parodies of real-life products were obviously thrown in because "Shrek 2" had them. Now, most of jokes are now dated. "Shark Tale" comes off as very formulaic, which would seem to plague a lot of DreamWorks Animation's films. The animation is nice and colorful, and I thought the underwater city was kind of unique. I thought the two jellyfish characters were pretty funny, as well as some other scenes. It's basically a fun animated comedy flick. I remember disliking it when I first saw it, but I gave it another chance I somewhat enjoyed it. It's no "Nemo", and it's no animated masterpiece, not at all. But compared to some later DreamWorks efforts like "Madagascar" and "Kung Fu Panda", it's a weak effort.