Reviewed by Tim Wong

BEFORE I ponder the demise of the human race via the modern day animated picture, it should be known first that Shark Tale is not the sequel to Finding Nemo, but an alarming trend in petty studio rivalry. This juvenile display in playground competitiveness is matched only by the irony that when it comes to computer animation, both Dreamworks and Pixar – the latter formerly of Disney – are in the business of entertaining children, and even more so, the business of generating profit. So really, it's not that childish after all.


The exhibitionism, however, persists on the most juve-of-scales, each studio determined to tread firmly on the other's toes in that most public of arenas: the box office. It began with those two insect movies, and is happening again – courtesy of a coat-tailing Dreamworks – in the form of a PG-rated scuba dive with the fishes and other assorted marine life. Like that hasn't been done before.

Although part of me considers all those man-hours spent in front of a computer screen a wasted opportunity (unless out of spite or cunning, why the ocean when it's already been done?), the animal kingdom – really the subgenre of children's animation and storytelling – has pretty much been covered now from A to Z; from jungle habitats to African plains; from prehistoric times to perpetual bug life; from Poohs named Winnie to motherless fawns; from the bestial to the oh-so irritatingly cute. And having endeared their furry-little selves into the hearts of children and into the jugular vein of popular cinema itself, it ends up that the ruling species – the opposable thumbed, so-called intelligent beings of this earth – find themselves no longer at the head of the food chain, but ground down to an endangered pulp when it comes to the Western animated world.¹

As a child, it was The Wizard of Oz complex I responded to most; the fantastical, fondly imaginative stories that despite their otherworldliness, managed to remain bound to a "no place like home" earthiness. As the choice medium of today's digital-savvy pre-teens, computer animation hasn't exactly ditched the real world altogether – in Toy Story or A Bug's Life (and in fact the entire Pixar catalogue to date), human existence in its rightful place at the top of the pecking order, commands a certain omnipresence – yet culminating here in Dreamwork's Shark Tale, seems a little too defined in its simplicity, and just a little too confined to its own insular bubble. It's as if the film, from fear of it bursting, tries much too hard to make these kids buy the whole sock puppet facade. Flushed of any heart and soul, the end result is direct, risk-free and calculated like the very binary code of digital animation itself.

Although my lament suggests otherwise, Shark Tale isn't people-less – at least, not in the physical sense. But amidst the cacophony of product placements, cultural stereotypes and Jaws humour, the remnants of human civilisation permeate not in coexistence or even in tandem with a parallel universe, but as sort of an artificial insemination. So shark mob boss Don Lino not only sounds like Robert De Niro, but has the look and gesture of him too, courtesy of a dip in the gene pool of facial molls and grumpy Italian American brow lines. A blabbering Martin Scorsese gets his bushy eyebrows; Angelina Jolie a botox pout; Renée Zellweger that undercurrent of cutesy non-glamour. Lenny, the shark who's "different" from the rest (the subtext here being that his sexuality might even be in question), is perhaps the least physically representative, although only because Jack Black is purged of that possessively hairy, animalistic rage he's known for, but can't tap into for what is atypically, such an introverted role.

But it's Will Smith's incessant smack-talking donkey redux, that offsets Shark Tale's already slippery grasp on proceedings. A weedy little fish adorned in symbolic tropical yellow and blues, the insinuation here is that beyond the attitudinal grunt of his bulky action roles, the only place left for Mr. Smith to turn to is The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It's a schtick he obviously hasn't forgotten, duplicating that same ghetto-to-high rolling metamorphosis with Oscar – an aquatic wannabe traversing the fishy path from nobody to somebody on the wave of a well-fabricated lie. Although The Fresh Prince might not be of this millennium's kiddie generation, the presence of such an overt caricature is just one too many stuffed inside of a pop-cultural Piñata bulging at the papier-mâché seams. Granted, the film feels less like a meeting of two worlds than it does a tasteless, waterlogged cross-breed of celebrity ego and corporate endorsements.

It's the children I feel sorry for. Like the pair of girls sitting in front of me at the screening I attended, each proclaiming quite emphatically the words "not funny" after every 13+ joke. So not only has Shark Tale shredded itself of any gravity – the kind you get in a Hayao Miyazaki film, where the magic of transcendence is in the feeling of being transported between real and fantasy worlds (and not just being dumped square in the middle of one) – but it's also surprisingly void of any child-intrinsic elements. Whether it's the absence of non-adult characters to empathise with, the distinct lack of any childhood context (like the fairytale scenarios of Shrek, or the bedroom portal of Monsters Inc.), or the lopsidedness of advanced humour (self-parody, Mafia references, or even sushi jokes, which the kids didn't seem to get), it's a film founded on the spectacle of computer animation, but without the human touch; a mechanical theme park of bright lights and merry-go sounds that's persuasive enough to rope in its core demographic, but ultimately a hollow, child-unfriendly nonevent.