Awfully underrated

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 2010)

This animated story is set down in the ocean with the main characters as fish and mollusks. The story is about a unsatisfied tongue scrubber, Oscar, who works at the whale wash, owned by a blowfish, Mr Sykes, who has connected deals with local mob boss Don Lino. Both of them are literally in deep with the sharks. Oscar owes a huge and overdue debt to them, and his co-worker Angie, secretly in love with him, offers him the money to cover it, but he blows it all on a seahorse. Meanwhile, Don Lino is concerned about the image of his son, Lenny, who refuses to eat meat. He sends his other son, Frankie, to teach him how to hunt. They spot Oscar being tortured by Sykes's jellyfish henchmen, Ernie and Bernie and Frankie sends Lenny after him to gobble him up, but he just can't bring himself to eat a fish. Enraged, Frankie speeds after Oscar and is stopped by an anchor that lands on him and fatally wounds him. Lenny, distraught with grief and guilt, swims away. Ernie and Bernie then find Oscar beside the dead shark and assume that he killed him. Oscar now realizes he can take advantage of this and makes up a story that instantly brings him fame and fortune, and winning the heart of a beautiful but shallow lion fish, Lola. However, Don Lino, angered over the loss of his son, vows to find a way to get to him and make him pay.
The message basically shows that Oscar, not knowing that Angie loves him, doesn't realize that he never needed to be at the top of the reef to feel good. Anyone who has good lives, making a good living and hanging out with friends, always want more out of life, and only once they loose the good life they had before, do they realize it. I think a lot of people can relate to that. This film has the best cast ever. The fact that all these brilliant actors are together in one film is what makes it worthwhile to watch. Robert De Niro, Will Smith, Martin Scorsese, Angelina Jolie, Renée Zelweger and Jack Black. I loved this film so much that I became obsessed with all the actors who appeared in it. It introduced me to Mafia films, which of course contained some of the best in all of film history. It also has an excellent soundtrack full of brilliant music, which in my opinion, is a thing a great movie has to have.
Unfortunately, this picture has now become terribly underrated, so much that people don't even want to hear about it anymore, let alone praise it. After Shrek, Dreamworks produced this great film, then a second Shrek (not as good as the first one, but better than the third) and Madagascar. The latter, though compared to Shark Tale, was a disappointment, it became one of the last last good movies that Dreamworks Animation released. They just seemed to have lost it now. Even the acclaimed How To Train Your Dragon, which was much better than some of the previous Dreamwork films, lacks anything exceptional. Only Kung Fu Panda and Megamind seems to capture the real essence of Shark Tale and the first Shrek. They always mention Shrek and Madagascar in their new films, but never Shark Tale, which is a real shame. When you look it like that, there's really nothing bad about it. It's a funny comedy that really lifts your spirits. Pixar often continues makes outstanding movies, but I'll always remember this one as the film that introduced me to the real masterpieces of cinema.