OVP: Shark Tale (2004)

Film: Shark Tale (2004)
Stars: Will Smith, Jack Black, Robert de Niro, Renee Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, Peter Falk, Katie Couric
Director: Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, & Rob Letterman
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

You've likely noticed in the past two weeks a bit more conversation around the films of 2004-06, which isn't an accident.  I've been moving at a decent clip through a number of Oscar Viewing Project viewings, and these movies are next up in my queue as I've polished off pretty much every Oscar-nominated film since.  As a result, we're going to be heading today back to when the Best Animated Feature race was still in its infancy, when there were only three nominees and one could question whether or not even that number was too much, considering that they were giving "Oscar-nominated" status to a movie as generic (though insanely profitable) as Shark Tale.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around Oscar (Smith) a blue fish who spends his days working at a Whale Wash (a carwash for whales-no muscles were stretched here), but day-dreaming about living the life of someone rich-and-famous.  He is adored by his friend Angie (Zellweger), who is secretly in love with Oscar, and who offers up an inherited pink pearl as collateral when Oscar's boss Sykes (Scorsese) calls in all of the money that Oscar owes him, as Oscar is inclined to waste his paychecks on get-rich-quick schemes.  Oscar loses the money in a bet, but before he's found out by Angie & essentially killed by Sykes, the shark that was going to kill him dies because it's hit in the head by an anchor, and Oscar claims he was the one who killed it.  He is proclaimed the "Sharkslayer," a myth that is further perpetrated when Lenny (Black), a vegetarian shark, helps Oscar out by pretending to die like his brother (who was hit with the anchor).  The film ends with Oscar being found out by Lenny's father Don Lino (de Niro, mining every last inch of that Godfather legacy for coin), but ultimately coming clean, with the sharks letting his reef go free and him getting back together with Angie, now as a legitimate partner in the Whale Wash.

It's kind of hard to describe how big of a deal this might have been circa 2004.  Though the actors involved are obviously still famous, Jolie, Smith, & Zellweger were at the peak of their movie star power when this film came out, and so the movie's gargantuan ($350+ million gross) makes sense.  I mean, they found a way to get Marty Scorsese to play a pufferfish-you've gotta have some pull to be able to get a legend like Scorsese to do his only voiceover role.

If only the film was worth it.  I don't know how they could pull this many magnetic film personas into one room and come up with something so generic, but they did.  The film's plot is easy to see coming, and no one is doing anything interesting here, not even Jack Black who could make the phonebook funny if given the opportunity.  Scorsese is arguably the best of the bunch simply from a curiosity standpoint, but Smith is playing his persona as a fish, as is Jolie, as is de Niro, and there's none of the inventive voicework that was making Pixar (Dreamworks' biggest animated competitor during this era as Disney was also phoning it in at the time) a critical darling at the time.  Even the color palette seems a bit uninspired compared to Finding Nemo a year earlier.  The movie, much like Shrek, ages poorly, with pop cultural references that die just a few years after it was made, and the only saving grace for the picture might be that it found enough stars that simply will always be famous that trading on their personas will still work years later.  Unfortunately, the actual movie itself never takes advantage of the call sheet and gives a hackneyed, disposable tale.