Shark Tale: Ten years on.

I first watched Shark tale in the cinema of Pathe Balexert 10 years ago on October the 30^th 2004. I was fifteen years old.  I had high anticipations for the film, as I was already a fan of Will Smith at the time after I had a dream about him during the summer holidays in Spain.

At 13:00, in a less than packed room, I watched the animated DreamWorks comedy, and I came out of the cinema an hour and a half later completely blown away. The acting, the storyline, the animation all astounded me. It was unlike any other film I had seen before.

After that, I simply could not wait to see it again. But I vowed not to watch it again in the cinema, as it would be a waste of money. I would wait patiently, or rather impatiently for the DVD to come out in my local store (when it was still standing) In the meantime, I listened to the fantastic soundtrack and I began to search for the films the actors of Shark Tale, Will Smith, Robert DeNiro, Martin Scorsese, Jack Black, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie and Michael Imperioli, and then watch them one by one. Along the way, I discovered Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece: GoodFellas. Shocked by it’s violence at first, but ultimately falling in love with it, I became a huge fan of his movies.  Robert DeNiro, one of the greatest living actors of our time, gives everything in movies, both good and bad, small and big.  My admiration for Will Smith became stronger and stronger throughout the years.

When I finally got to watch Shark Tale again on the 28^th of January 2005, rented from the DVD store, I was once again so impressed with it that I watched it again the next day.  My love of movies had been born, and I discovered many truly wonderful films after watching Goodfellas, all thanks to this Academy Award nominated film about a little fish telling a big white lie.

Not everyone was impressed however.  And throughout the years, many people have agreed that this film is shallow, full of unnecessary pop culture references and its missed aim at a kid’s audience. It’s now all but forgotten, and no one seems to want to remember it.   Now that I am no longer a teen and have seen many fantastic movies since then, I’ve decided to re-watch the film for it’s ten year anniversary and see if some of the critics have a point.

Basically the film is about Oscar (Will Smith) , a hip hop cleaner fish, working at a car wash who dreams of a better life outside his seemingly mediocre existence.  His obsession with money and fame leads to loans from his boss Sykes (Martin Scorsese), and it all eventually goes sour after he wastes the money he owes on a betting seahorse. His colleague and best friend Angie (Renée Zelleger) is in love with him, and she represents the life that he could have had if he wasn’t so infatuated with a luxury life style.

Meanwhile, Mob Boss Don Lino (Robert DeNiro) wants his son Lenny to eat meat when he continually refuses to do so.

So when his brother Frankie (Michael Imperioli) takes him out for a swim and eat a fish, they both come across Sykes’s Rastafarian jellyfish henchman, Ernie and Bernie (Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley) torturing Oscar. After Lenny, a straight up vegetarian, fails to eat Oscar, Frankie goes after him and in the process is hit by a fallen anchor and mortally wounded.  Lenny, grief-stricken, blames himself and leaves. The jellyfish then find Oscar beside the dead Frankie and assume that he had killed him. And Oscar being Oscar, lies that he did and makes up a fantastic story about the “confrontation”, which everyone laps up like a pack of starving puppies.  This brings Oscar the fame and fortune he always wanted, and even snagging himself a new girlfriend, the self confessed superficial gold digger Lola (Angelina Jolie). But his troubles are far from over, as an angry Don Lino wants answers as to who killed his son.

All the characters are pretty well developed and well crafted. After watching this again, I came to a conclusion: This is a fun movie to watch with some unexpected elements. One of which is Lenny’s character, who, as a vegetarian shark, cannot tell his alpha-male mob boss father that he doesn’t eat meat. This is of course an allegory for a male homosexual coming to terms with his sexuality, and dreading to tell his father the truth, for fear that he might reject him.

“He’s special, alright.” says Sykes in a dark voice to Lino.

“I’m so tired of keeping it all a secret!” Lenny laments to Oscar later in the movie. “And my dad, forget it, he’ll never accept me for who I am!”

Bear in mind that this was made in 2004, a time when people wouldn’t dream of putting in a gay character in an animated film.

The film is, however, by no means groundbreaking or intentionally smart, for the following reasons:

The first one being is that the producers clearly wanted to aim for a kids’s audience, changing the name “Shark Slayer” to “Shark Tale” early in production to appeal to families. Yet the film doesn’t seem to want to do that. It deals with an adult fish getting in dept with a boss who deals with the Mafia, a son of a mobster who comes to terms with his differences and Angie’s unrequited love of Oscar. It’s played out as a mild comedy for adults, a little like Groundhog Day and Keeping The Faith.

Another reason that the critics were so harsh on this film, was that it came out merely a year after the universally successful Pixar fish film Finding Nemo, so it was quite inevitable that they were going to make comparisons.  That film clearly knew what its target audience was, and triumphed immensely on every level with sadness, wit, depth and comedy.

The two previous DreamWorks animated films, Antz and Shrek, featured similar adult themes, and some mild language. Shark Tale became somewhat in between, which probably led to its downfall with the critics.

But in actual fact, this is really what attracted me so much in the first place. Animated movies are strictly made as comedies for children, and nothing else. Which is a shame, as animation is an art that should go to all genres of movies. See Ralph Bakshi films for the proof.

As for the endless pop culture references, this film is in part a parody of the Godfather. But it's not something that should be the drive and heart of a good storyline, in my opinion.  A much better parody of the mobster culture is Analyze This, which also stars Robert DeNiro as a gangster boss who seeks help from an unwilling modest psychiatrist (Billy Crystal).

I saw that one reviewer pointed out that the film copies rap and hip hop culture, and makes shallow materialism and the soulless luxuries that go with it, into the things that most people desire or should desire the most.

They also pointed out that the similarity of the fish and the celebrities who voice them, that singles out the “monstrous” and “disturbing” celebrity obsessed culture that we still live in.

I don’t agree with the reviews, but I can see where they’re coming from. A film which doesn’t know it’s own target audience often leads to failure.

Yes, we do live in a celebrity, materialistic and fame-obsessed world, and for a movie to graphically exploit these things is a very weak move indeed.

But Shark Tale ultimately fights against the idea of desperately having all the money and fame at whatever costs, and shouts out the message that a “normal” boring life is actually really cool, and is nothing to be ashamed of.

"Before the money and before the fame, before the lie, to me, you were a somebody, Oscar. Now you're nothing, but a fake, a sham, a con. You're a joke. Just go. Because I'm tired of hearing how everything you had in your life wasn't good enough. Including me." Angie confessing her love for Oscar, and ultimately rejecting him because of his obsession with a materialistic, heartless lifestyle. 

Bottom line, as I said before, Shark Tale is an entertaining, fun movie.  It’s no Lion King or Finding Nemo by any accounts, but it delivers.  I enjoyed watching it then and I enjoy it now.