The phrase "sleep with the fishes" takes on new meaning in the 3-D computer-animated Shark Tale, a sort of harder edged Finding Nemo father-son story set in a hip, urbanized undersea world.
With a shark seen swimming off Cape Cod making headlines, it seems the perfect time for Shark Tale. It's a sort of Damon Runyon Guys and Dolls underwater place of gangsters, gamblers, dolls, lowlifes, doublecrosses, tricksters and the fear of sudden death . . . at least if a toothy shark grabs you.
But that's not likely to happen if Lenny, the shark, is involved. Lenny (Jack Black) is a kindly, good-natured, milquetoast shark who feels he's a disappointment to his tough ruler-of-the-sea father Don Lino (Robert De Niro), who takes no prisoners. Don Lino keeps pushing little fish and shrimp at Lenny to eat, but Lenny resists because he is -- gasp! -- a vegetarian. He even helps a worm get off a fisherman's hook. Lenny just wants to be friends with everybody.
That includes Oscar (Will Smith), an iridescent little fish, who enlists Lenny in his scheme to fool all the other fish into wrongly believing that he has singlehandedly killed a menacing shark, Frankie, who is Lenny's tougher brother. This elevates Oscar to the status he always dreamed of, at the "top of the reef," but also brings down the wrath of Don Lino and complicates his life.
The plot is exceptionally simple and would only be enough to fill a run-of-the-mill Saturday morning cartoon show. Unless you're under the age of 6, it's easy to see where everything is headed.
Happily, there are plenty of clever touches to keep even the most churlish adults entertained in Shark Tale's spin on our above-water world. This is a place that has its own Times Square-type crossroads, where Martha Sturgeon has a flower shop, the fish drink Coral Cola, the "walk signs" flash "swim" or "don't swim," a horse race features seahorses and TV newshen Katie Current (Katie Couric) creates a terrible fear of sharks among viewers, just as the real Couric cheerfully goes about spreading nationwide fear daily about everything from hurricanes to terrorists. Two of the film's funniest characters are Jamaican jellyfish with a reggae beat voiced by Ziggy Marley and Doug E. Doug.
Oscar unhappily works at the local "car wash" er, Whale Wash, in the nowhere job of scrubbing the giant beasts' tongues. He dreams of better days, but is a shiftless character who owes 5,000 clams to Whale Wash owner Sykes (Martin Scorsese) and can only imagine paying it by betting it all on a long-shot seahorse in a race at the track.
Despite his own poor track record, Oscar is secretly beloved by Angie (Renee Zellweger), who works at the Whale Wash. She is his one saving grace, although Oscar doesn't realize her feelings for a long time. When he takes up with the slithery femme fatale Lola (Angelina Jolie), Angie is shattered.
A lot of noise has been made by some Italo-American groups about the Godfather aspects of the script, though the gangsters in Shark Tale seem less Sopranos and more like the endearingly funny mobsters of De Niro's Analyze This. Capiche?
Rather, one might wonder if the NAACP might come down on the film because of its shiftless hero who dreams of moving on up to the top of the heap, but can only do that through a combination of luck, lies and hucksterism. Oscar gets ahead only by his wit and a happy, unexpected sudden reversal of fortune.
Youngsters, however, won't notice any of this and will be mesmerized by the hip sassiness of the characters, the clever mirror image of our world and the sparkling animation.
*** 1/2
Shark Tale
Starring: Voices by: Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, Martin Scorsese, Ziggy Marley, Doug E. Doug, Michael Imperioli, Vincent Pastore, Peter Falk, Katie Couric.
Rated: PG, contains cartoon violence.
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