(detailed information about this entry from Wikipedia)
Shark Tale is a 2004 CGI comedy produced by DreamWorks Animation. It features the voices of Will Smith, Jack Black, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, and Robert De Niro. Its original title was Sharkslayer, but the producers thought that this might provoke a degree of misunderstanding among the target audience of the film, children and families. Shark Tale is also one of the first three feature-length films to get the Game Boy Advance Video treatment. It was released into theaters on October 1, 2004.
Taglines: In fall, a new school will rule.
The story of what happens when one little fish tells a great white lie...
Behind every little fish is a great white lie.
A new school's gonna rule...
The story begins with an underachieving fish named Oscar (Will Smith), who is fantasizing about being rich and famous ... while making his way to work as a tongue scrubber at the Whalewash, a business much akin to a car or truck wash. Soon after arriving he is called to the office of his boss, Mr. Sykes (Martin Scorsese), to discuss the fact that he owes "five thousand clams" and has to pay it back by the next day. After explaining this to his best friend Angie (Renée Zellweger) (who harbors a secret love for him), she offers him a chance to pay back the money by pawning off an heirloom pink pearl. Oscar brings the money to the race track to meet Sykes, but becomes distracted by his wishes of grandeur and places it all on a long-shot bet. Such a large bet is noticed nearby by a beautiful fish named Lola (Angelina Jolie), who flagrantly flirts with Oscar until quickly discovering the truth. Sykes is furious that Oscar bet the money but nonetheless agrees to see how the race turns out. Moments before their "horse" crosses the finish line he trips and falls. The race is lost and Oscar is set to be surreptitiously killed.
Meanwhile, on another side of the ocean, a family of criminally-inclined sharks has a problem with one of their sons, Lenny (Jack Black). Lenny refuses to act the part of a killer and wishes to not have to live up to those expectations. With this, his father, Don Lino (Robert De Niro), decides that he must learn to kill, by being taught by Lenny's more savage brother, Frankie (Michael Imperioli).
As the two sharks set out to go in accordance with their father's wishes, Frankie spots the scene where Oscar is being electrocuted by Ernie and Bernie (Doug E. Doug & Ziggy Marley), Sykes' two Jamaican jellyfish thugs, and sends Lenny off to attack. The jellyfish spot Lenny and swim off, leaving Oscar alone with him. Lenny tries to calm Oscar down by telling him that he will not eat him, but Oscar will not listen and continues on screaming. Frankie becomes annoyed and tries to attack, but suddenly an unknown anchor falls and kills him. Lenny is panged with guilt and flees. As no one saw the deed done and Oscar was seen near the body, everyone thinks he did it, and Oscar sees this as the chance to both redeem himself and receive his fame.
Oscar comes back to the city with a new title of the Sharkslayer. Sykes becomes his manager, Lola becomes his girlfriend, and Oscar moves to the "top of the reef" to live in luxury. At the same time Don Lino has everyone out looking for Lenny, and when several get close to Oscar's town the other fish expect him to drive them away. On the way he meets Lenny once more who forces Oscar to let him stay with him because he does not want to go home. Soon Angie finds out about the lie and threatens to tell everyone but Oscar and Lenny convince her to keep quiet.
Although Oscar desires to please everyone, he soon discovers that he pleases no one; his paramour Angie is heartbroken by the fact that Oscar is no longer honest, while her hedonistic rival Lola repeatedly reminds Oscar that he has her only as long as he is famous. With Don Lino planning revenge, Oscar and Lenny stage an event where Lenny pretends to terrorize the town and Oscar must defeat him, throwing him into the depths of the ocean. Though this further cements Oscar as the Sharkslayer, it greatly angers Don Lino. Oscar dumps Lola, to her extreme anger, having never been dumped before. She vows revenge. Oscar buys some Valentine's Day gifts for Angie, but before he can present them to her, he finds that Don Lino has abducted Angie in order to force a meeting. Lenny comes along, now disguised as a dolphin named Sebastian. Angie is bound and gagged and presented to Don Lino on a plate, who prepares to eat her if Oscar doesn't comply. However, Lenny lunges forward and eats Angie up, so Oscar has dominance over the sharks. However, he spends too much time threatening the sharks that he does not realise how much pain Lenny is in, and Angie (along with a lot more scrap metal) is thrown up. Don Lino realizes it's Lenny and pursues Oscar through the reef. Oscar lures both sharks into a trap. Given an ovation by the other fish, Oscar confesses that he is not a Sharkslayer and that it was an anchor that had killed Frankie. However, he lectures Don Lino on. He lectures Don Lino not to prejudge people before he knows them properly and to not make the mistake he made in prejudging his wealth, so Don Lino and Lenny reconcile. Oscar forsakes all the wealth he has acquired, makes peace with the sharks, becomes manager of the Whalewash, and marries Angie. His business grows, as the sharks and whale sharks need to use it as well.
Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott make a cameo appearance in the end of the movie.
[edit] Cast of characters
- Will Smith as Oscar, the film's protagonist, Oscar is an underachieving worker in the Whalewash of Reef City. He tries to get out of trouble to receive his fame but when his boss, Sykes, orders him to get five thousand clams for Sykes to pay off Don Lino. Oscar then has the title "Sharkslayer" when everyone believes he killed Frankie, the oldest son of Lino. His best friend Angie thinks that he has lied in order to get his fame and Oscar hasn't been the same since their apparent breakup.
- Robert De Niro as Don Lino, father of Frankie and Lenny and the leader of a mob of criminally-inclined sharks, Don Lino is the main antagonist of the film who only wants Lenny to be a killer shark but when he thinks Oscar killed Frankie, he becomes depressed as he knows everyone who are at the cruise ship loved Frankie for who he is and when Lenny ran away, he sends squads to find him. When Oscar pretends to defeat Lenny, he knows that things have to be done and he decides to make Oscar as the "Catch-Of-The-Day". He is a parody of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather.
- Renee Zellweger as Angie, Oscar's best friend/coworker, Angie harbors a secret love for Oscar and in order win a race for Sykes, she gives him her grandmother's pearl to be out of debt to win the race. Soon, when Oscar owns the title "Sharkslayer", Angie learns that Oscar lied in order to receive his fame.
- Jack Black as Lenny, a great white shark, Lenny isn't normally a meat-eater---he's a vegetarian. When it comes to his fellow sea creatures, he has locked jaws. Lenny becomes depressed when his brother, Frankie, is killed and ran off from home where he practically befriends Oscar. He is also the young son of Lino.
- Angelina Jolie as Lola, a seductive gold-digger lion fish whom Oscar develops a love interest for, although it is later found that Lola is up to no good and is only using him for his fame and fortune.
- Martin Scorsese as Sykes, Oscar's boss, Sykes is a porcupine fish who wants Oscar to get five thousand clams in order to pay off Don Lino. Oscar bets the money and when the race is lost, he orders Ernie and Bernie to send Oscar to the Wastelands. When Oscar owns the title of "Sharkslayer", he is delighted to become his manager and he didn't have an idea that Oscar hadn't killed Frankie, the oldest son of Lino.
- Ziggy Marley and Doug E. Doug as Ernie and Bernie, two jellyfish and Oscar's part-time friends, Ernie and Bernie are the two Jamaican bodyguards and henchmen of Sykes. Ernie and Bernie are normally different from each other and the two were possibly great friends who work at the Whalewash. They are obsessed at playing video games and enjoy jabbing Oscar with their vicious stingers. Ernie and Bernie have problems with answering the calls during the time at the Whalewash when Angie had been captured, as they kept messing up the business' motto.
- Michael Imperioli as Frankie, the oldest, more savage son of Lino, Frankie is Lenny's brother who normally is a killer and always works at his father's cruise ship and always gets around to eat. When Lenny makes up a mistake, Frankie is hired to train Lenny to become a beastly killer and they stumble upon Oscar in the Wastelands, Frankie tells Lenny to attack him but when Lenny fakes the attack, Frankie becomes angry with him and after a brief chase, he prepares to eat Oscar but he ultimately has his fate when an anchor falls and hits him, killing him. Everyone thinks that Oscar killed him but it wasn't truly real.
- Vincent Pastore as Luca, Lino's "left-hand, right-hand man" thug, Luca is an octopus who typically is an idiotic kind of person.
- Peter Falk as Don Ira Feinberg, a 79-year-old leopard shark. He is a friend to Don Lino.
- David P. Smith as Crazy Joe, a deranged hermit crab who is Oscar's other friend and having a "crazy attitude", he normally lives in a dumpster near the Whalewash.
- Katie Couric, Tracy Grimshaw, Fiona Phillips or Cristina Parodi as Katie Current, the local reporter. At the time, Couric hosted the Today Show in America. In the Australian release, then local Today Show co-host Grimshaw dubbed the lines, as did Phillips of the UK's GM-TV for the UK release of the film. Cristina Parodi of Italy's Verissimo provided the Italian version of the character.
[edit] Reception
[edit] Nominations
- 2004 Oscar nominated for Best Animated Feature
[edit] Critical
Critical reception to Shark Tale since its release has been mixed and largely poor. On Rotten Tomatoes, it was reported that 33% of the critics gave the film positive reviews based on 166 reviews due to similarities to another fish-themed film, Finding Nemo. Critical reception from Metacritic to Shark Tale were also mixed. It received a 48% rating based on 36 reviews. Users of Metacritic gave the film a 5.2 rating based on 39 votes.
[edit] Box office
Despite the negative reviews, Shark Tale grossed $47,604,606 on its opening weekend placing itself #1. For the next two weeks, it stayed as #1 movie grossing $31,330,299 on its second week and on its third week, the film grossed $22,005,952. Overall, Shark Tale made $160 million nationwide and $206 million overseas with $367 million worldwide.
[edit] Criticisms and analysis
Many Italian-American organizations protested Shark Tale for perpetuating negative stereotypes of Italian-Americans. Many groups feel that such a movie would promote negative ideas about Italian-Americans among the younger viewers that the movie appealed to. Though much protesting was done, only a few aspects of the film had stereotypical features removed upon release.
Gay groups noted Lenny's "vegetarian" shark as an obvious metaphor for coming out of the closet, and even speculate that the character Lenny could possibly be a representative of a gay man. Noteworthy in this discussion is the fact that refusing to "eat meat" could be construed as a rejection of masculinity. A brief passing of Walter, a sperm whale voiced by Anthony Anderson, triggers a few suggestive comments regarding "sperm whales", although it isn't said outright. Lenny also expresses his fear of telling his father of being "vegetarian" and how his orientation would not be accepted. This is metaphorical of the stereotypical factor of a relationship between a conservative father and a homosexual son.
Roger Ebert has said that the film doesn't make sense as a children's movie, "Since the target audience for Shark Tale is presumably kids and younger teenagers, how many of them have seen the R-rated "Godfather" and will get all the inside jokes? Not a few, I suppose, and some of its characters and dialogue have passed into common knowledge. But it's strange that a kid-oriented film would be based on parody of a 1972 gangster movie for adults."[1] He also observes that younger viewers would have trouble enjoying a movie about adult characters with adult problems (elaborate love triangles and a main character wanting to clear his debt with loan sharks) and compares it to more successful fish-focused animated features The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo, and The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, which features a simpler plot that anybody can identify with, and draws humor from the lifestyle of the fish instead of transferring ethnic stereotypes into fish as does Shark Tale.
According to the Internet Movie Database there were plans for a Shark Tale 2, however the listing has disappeared.
[edit] Trivia
- The movie starts when the kid in the DreamWorks logo casts his fishing line and the camera zooms in on its hook.
- During the closing credits, there is a final scene in which Lola finds a surprise waiting for her in Oscar's penthouse suite.
- Crazy Joe scuttles back and forth and interacts with the credits as they roll. They end with Mrs. Sanchez leaning out her window and telling everyone to go home because it's past their bedtime.
- The shark mob's hangout is the R.M.S. Titanic. We even see a clothed version of the famous sketch of the character Rose from Titanic hanging on the wall (complete with the Heart of the Ocean diamond), during one scene.
- At one time Christopher Walken was considered for the voice of Luca the Octopus and Sacha Baron Cohen was considered for one of the Jellyfish.
- The original voice for Don Lino was supposed to be James Gandolfini. But he dropped out and was replaced by Robert De Niro.
- As the voice of Ernie the Jellyfish, Ziggy Marley sings the song "Three Little Birds" -- a song written by his father, Bob Marley. But Ziggy changes birds to fishes.
- When the Shorties tag "Sharkslayer" on the wall, the painting of Oscar wearing armor and carrying a sword disappears after it is first seen.
- When Angie and Sykes are watching Oscar on TV "killing" Lenny, a rendering error means that Angie's tail passes through the desk.
- Oscar throws Lennie through a Jaws poster when faking Lennie's death, next time you see the Jaws poster it is fixed, and the time after it is broken again.
[edit] Soundtrack track listing
- Three Little Birds - Sean Paul feat. Ziggy Marley
- Car Wash (Shark Tale Mix) - Christina Aguilera feat. Missy Elliott
- Good Foot - Timbaland feat. Justin Timberlake
- Secret Love - JoJo
- Lies & Rumors - D12
- Got to Be Real - Mary J. Blige feat. Will Smith
- A Little Less Conversation - Elvis featuring Junkie XL
- Can't Wait - Avant
- Gold Digger - Ludacris feat. Bobby V. and Lil Fate
- Get It Together - India.Arie
- We Went as Far as We Felt Like Going - The Pussycat Dolls
- Digits - fan 3
- Sweet Kind of Life - Cheryl Lynn
- Some of My Best Friends Are Sharks - Hans Zimmer
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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