Nicholas Thurkettle

Originally posted 1/5/05

Shark Tale
Directors: Vicky Jensen, Bibo Bergeron, Rob Letterman
Writers: Rob Letterman, Michael J. Wilson
Producers: Bill Damaschke, Janet Healy, Allison Lyon Segan
Featuring the voices of: Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese

So it’s an odd quibble to make in an animated kids’ movie that there is no good reason a fish should need an elevator to get to a top floor apartment. He couldn’t swim up? But I am just picky enough to think that the reason we watch movies set in another world is to bathe our imaginations in the unfamiliar, or something which is familiar but skewed in a unique way.

In Shark Tale, a harmless, diverting, but ultimately less than memorable animated comedy, fish, sharks and other creatures of the deep wear sunglasses, listen to walkmen, make their own TV shows, and dream of owning surround sound systems. Another odd quibble would be how a surround sound system works underwater, but I’m starting to come off as too much the grump.

Maybe what I am asking is, why is this story set underwater at all? Its trappings are the trappings of the human world – the sharks sit in booths at a restaurant and eat off of plates, fish use cell phones to communicate. Most of the characters spend their time upright rather than horizontally. Why did they have to be fish?
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