Shark Tale doesn't flow!

Rating: 4/10 (15 February 2005)

This movie has to much of a B-movie black exploitation musical feel to it. It would be fine by me if they didn't include all the spoof, the mafia angle and the forced "I saw that coming ha ha" kind of jokes in it. I think PDI wanted to incorporate so much in this movie that it became very thinly spread. The result: the story got totally diluted, which is a hard thing to do given its simple plot. The main failure of this movie is that they wanted to develop the characters more than the plot. But the problem is that the characters are very shallow, so when Oscar does his hip-hop thing for the 20th time, it just get boring, repetitious and the plot looses its drive. The visuals are OK. It is not my style. I think the color scheme is aimed at a more juvenile audience. My 2 year old son bursts in a laugh every time something purple appears on the screen. So that target audience is covered. And now for the inevitable comparison with Finding Nemo: there is no comparison other than it involves fish and water. The color scheme is different, the technology seems different too. In my opinion Finding Nemo looks more realistic (more accurate ocean and light simulation) than Shark Tale. Finding Nemo is about real fishes, Shark Tale is more symbolic. It is more like people disguised as fishes. My conclusion: if you belong to the crowd that loves flashy, 1-second-attentionspan MTV video clips, then Shark Tale is the thing for you.