An over-rated Hollywood churner that squanders a cast with only minimal interest

Rating: 4/10 (1 October 2004)

While Sharktale may appeal to an audience out there, it's hard to tell for which one. The film is not a failure, but thanks to the mega-hype by the Hollywood system, with marketing railing up the walls and the stars of the film (only recognizable by voice and oddly shaped animation on the faces) trumped to bring in the kids and adults, would have to do a lot to live up to it. As it is, the filmmakers bring in not just movie references to not only The Godfather but many other crime films and shows, but urban/hip-hop culture, and corporations like the Gap, Krispy Kreme, Burger King, etc. But the film is such in love with the in-jokes that it leaves the story and characters on the cloth-hanger. The jokes that do work are the ones that aren't as over-the-top as the others, or at least those that don't involve flatulence and over-emphasis on "bling-bling".
This is not to say that there aren't ways to make such elements funny- Shrek 2 just skimmed the line on what was tolerable. But Sharktale gives the audience a story that involves a lot for kids to digest, despite the conventions and clichés of it (little fish wants big things, bets all his money at the sea-horse racetrack and loses, blow-fish boss orders execution, then has a run-in and takes credit for a mobster's son's dead corpse, becomes a celebrity, and is under pressure with the other son who's a bit of a wimp, and with his love interest). As for the adults, the gags and puns sometimes doesn't work either, as did in Shrek or Finding Nemo. Some of the ideal wit that emerged in Dreamworks' first CGI feature, Antz, does come through, like an (all to brief) Abbot and Costello riff by the fish played by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese. There's even a funny bit with a shrimp cocktail.
One big problem in the film is that the casting, while somewhat efficient, isn't utilized properly. Actors like Will Smith and Jack Black can be funny, but the lines and jokes they pull in the film lie kind of flat in the water. This might not be so for some of the kids and adults in the audience. However, Sharktale does depend on a varying sense of humor. The ideas being some of the casting is of interest, like small roles for Michael Imperioli, Peter Faulk, and Katie Couric. But then they don't get much to do. Are they just there because they're celebrities, or does the script give them something to do? From my point of view, the script doesn't deliver, at least with the kind of abandon it used to.
In fact, Sharktale seems to compensate such things as a marketing-tested script and mis-casting with the usual extravagant and detailed animation. If not for the huge budget to cast the stars, implement the hip-hop soundtrack, and get the CGI, wouldn't this film be made under a direct-to-video or TV standard? There seem to be two double standards that also got to me as I walked out of the theater- 1) in order for the 3-D to work, as in a classic like Toy Story, the character shouldn't be 2-D. When an actor like Robert De Niro has only one emotion throughout the whole film, and changes at the end of the last act, the character as well as the actor playing him is reduced to something of a video-game caricature. 2) If the message of the film is to accept who you are and not to lie in order to get to the top (an admirable message for kids amid all the phooey in the story), then why would the Sykes character, played by Scorsese, have on the "bling-bling" and hip-hop language he hasn't had through-out the rest of the story?
Even just as a stand-alone film, aside from the lineage of CGI in the past ten years, Sharktale is just nothing new. It's the kind of film you're glad to see once, so that you know you saw it, and know why you liked it or dis-liked it. C-