Shark Tale (2004) Review

Jack Nicholson in Prizzi's Honor; Dean Stockwell in Married to the Mob; Robert DeNiro in Shark Tale. The Mafia is no stranger to great cartoon characters.

Has there ever been an animated feature with the acting pedigree of Shark Tale? Quite simply, no.

Six of the film's lead voices have 18 Oscar nominations and three wins between them, beginning with Peter Falk's Best Supporting Actor nomination in 1960 for his portrayal of cold-blooded hit man Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles in Murder Inc. and ending with Renee Zellweger's triumph last year for Cold Mountain; another actor, Michael Imperioli, just won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his superb work this past season in The Sopranos; and although the closest Jack Black has come to the Academy Awards is a Golden Globe nomination for School of Rock, he more than makes up for it by virtue of the fact that he is himself the equivalent of a walking, talking cartoon character.

But without a doubt, the central parental curiosity of Shark Tale is the unique opportunity to listen to a two-time Oscar winner - Robert DeNiro - essentially reprise his celebrated role as Vito Corleone in the form of Don Lino, the head of a family of sharks clearly tilting more towards The Godfather, Part IV territory. Although not quite past their prime, this group of once fearsome killer beasts now apparently prefers to remain comfortably ensconced within the underwater remains of the Titanic, taking on no worse an adversary than a lippy shrimp cocktail.

Robert De Niro on screen (Courtesy of IMDB)

Although DeNiro has done voiceover work at least twice before - as a narrator in the 1998 film Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth and in the 1987 TV movie Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam - this is the first time he has fully embraced the medium in his more traditional fictional skin. Without the now famously parodied facial ticks and movements, DeNiro's delicate vocal inflections become readily more apparent. There's a deceptively powerful melody to the way he delivers his Shark Tale dialogue, suggesting perhaps that his vocal instrument is a tool as crucial in its own way to his craft as breathing and tempo was to Sinatra's.

Then there's Martin Scorsese, the man who directed DeNiro to his second Academy Award win in Raging Bull. Though his high strung blowfish Sykes offers far less surprises, it is still a post-modern pleasure to behold. Let's face it - through interviews, DVDs, behind the scenes looks at his many movies and cameos in both his own works and others - we've all come to know and love the energetic rhythms of the filmmaker's passionate patter.

Scorsese in booth (Courtesy of IMDB)

In listening to the way DeNiro and Scorsese go at it in Shark Tale, it becomes clear what the dynamic on their various movie sets over the years must have been like, with it essentially boiling down to Scorsese repeating 'Are you crazy?' and DeNiro mumbling, 'Huh?' The director's performance is not quite as breathtaking as his various commentary tracks on the recently released DVD box set The Martin Scorsese Collection, but it's a delightfully entertaining runner-up.

The main problem with Shark Tale is that the subplot is way more appealing than the main plot, making the whole thing feel more akin to Atlantis than Finding Nemo. The central narrative about a daydreamer (Smith), his co-worker (Zellweger) and the gold digger who briefly comes between them (Jolie) is regularly overshadowed by the film's kaleidoscopic movie-movie references and loveably lethargic thugs. And while the CGI animation work has a slightly different sheen to it than the Pixar look we have all become so familiar with, the technical aspects of each frame - from simulated camera movements to what's going on in the background - remain breathtaking.

While kiddies ages eight and below will likely find themselves fitfully bored whenever the parody stuff plays out on screen, and may also be a little scared by one pivotal scene involving a shark and an anchor, the rest of the audience is likely to find this a perfectly acceptable companion piece to the summer smash Shrek 2.

In fact, given Shark Tale's intricately woven underwater New York City world of and the Shrek sequel's cheeky take on Beverly Hills, with their respective Katie Couric and Joan-Melissa Rivers media shadings, it's easy to imagine the respective creative teams for these two Dreamworks flicks getting together at some point to exchange a hard drive full of unused gags.

At least twice in Shark Tale, the dialogue makes winking reference to the famous Joe Pesci 'So you think I'm funny?' exchange from Goodfellas. And if Pesci wasn't so busy playing golf these days, there's no doubt he would have been seriously pitched the Jack Black role of Lenny.

But sitting there in the darkened theater as the credits rolled, the absent voice I suddenly couldn't get out of my head was that of Jerry Seinfeld. Not only are the stand-up comedian's vocal arpeggios an almost pitch perfect match to those of DeNiro's, albeit about an octave higher. But Seinfeld is also currently hard at work writing a script for his own 2005 Dreamworks animated feature, Bee Movie.

Seinfeld playing a wasp? Heck, that's easily as high-concept as DeNiro inhabiting a heavy-lidded, firm jowled shark. But Jerry, do us all a favor and skip the drippy love triangle stuff, OK? Because as Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. and Toy Story have all shown, you're more likely to make a great animated CGI movie when you ditch the conventional romantic entanglements.