Unfairly slated

Rating: 7/10 (31 July 2005)

I'm a big fan of the new wave of animated movies that have hit the screen's in the past decade, from the groundbreaking Toy Story up until Shrek, Monsters Inc and last year's, um, incredible. The Incredibles, yet this is one film I had avoided, purely due to the poor reviews it had received. A poor mans Finding Nemo was the criticism levelled at it mostly, so after just viewing it what a pleasant surprise it turned out to be!
De Niro is superb as the mafioso Shark, as is Scourcese, who proves to be quite a good comic character actor. The animation is superb with an entire underwater New York-esquire city created with vehicles, taxi's, skyscrapers and shops beautifully recreated. There are plenty of gags with nods to such films as Jaws, The Godfather and Analyse This, and the film never loses pace throughout it's enjoyable 90 minutes.
My only slight criticism would be that Will Smiths character is basically him as a fish, all wise ass, shades,sneakers etc but I supposed this could be levelled at De Niro, but really this really doesn't detract from an enjoyable movie.