I've seen better kids movies

Rating: 4/10 (26 July 2005)

"Shark Tale" is the latest addition to the DreamWorks production in which instead of the great adventures from "Shrek," "Sinbad and the Seven Seas," "The Road To El Dorado" and "Antz" where they took place in land, we are now going underwater where things have turned upside down.
"Shark Tale" is a story about a fish name Oscar (voiced by Will Smith) in which he has dreams of making it big in the little city that is similar to Times Square; but like everything else in his life, it backfires. His best friend is Angie (Renee Zellweger) a fish that has a crush on him and doesn't want to say anything as she writes love notes on paper. Oscar runs into big problems when his boss Sykes (Martin Scorsese) has made local shark boss Don Lino (Robert De Niro)mad where if the little fish doesn't come up with 5,000 dollars, Oscar will be shark bait.
The subplot of the film involves Don Lino's youngest son Lenny (Jack Black) in which he doesn't want to take over the family business and the fact that he is a vegetarian where it upsets his father and his older brother Frankie, (Michael Imperiol) that the older brother forces Lenny to eat Oscar in which Frankie gets killed by an anchor leaving everybody to believe that Oscar killed a shark.
"Shark Tale" is not as smart or acute as "Finding Nemo" where we saw underwater in a new dimensional format or as funny as "Shrek" where mixing cruelty and ethnicity was the key pattern; "Shark Tale" is a parody of all of the Mafioso movies featuring De Niro and Scorsese from "Godfather," "GoodFellas," "Scarface," and other films where the characters are caught in a money situation; not to mention that kids will be curious on who the hell is Scorsese and De Niro. I say that because kids will be familiar with Will Smith (M.I.B. Films and ID4), Jack Black (School of Rock), Renee Zellweger (Jerry Maguire), Angelina Jolie (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider); but I would have felt better if they wouldn't make so many references to other films or pop culture items and just show a film where parents can take their kids to watch.
Oh well, that's why we have Shrek 1 and 2 at home.