Online entertainment columnist Jim Hill wrote earlier this year about the fact that Shrek 4D, the 3D movie now showing at Universal Studios theme parks on both U.S. coasts, was produced under the close scrutiny of Dreamworks Animation head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg and worked on by the company’s “A Team.” In other words, this little “theme park show” was given the same level of craftsmanship and attention to detail as Shrek’s big screen presentations. “Why for?” Well, Hill writes that Katzenberg perceives Shrek as Dreamworks’ big, green version of Mickey Mouse--their iconic star character--and so anything that Shrek’s involved in must be kept up to high standards so that his “brand” isn’t diminished. This whole issue never really struck me with what that fully means until I saw Dreamworks’ latest computer animated flick, Shark Tale, and I realized that Shrek is pretty much all Dreamworks Animation has going for it.
Ben Franklin wrote that, “fish and visitors smell in three days.” Well, I saw Shark Tale on opening night and found it to be already a bit stinky.
What’s good about Shark Tale? Well, I have to admit that the animation is quite good and the dazzling array of colors given to the underwater imagery is quite stunning, but, much like the Mariana Trench, it all drops off steeply from there.
One thing that continues to bug me about Dreamworks Animation is that they always put their films’ “star power” above everything else. While a studio like Pixar puts the story first, animation second and then “stars” a distant third, Dreamworks makes the fact that Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, etc., all talk during the movie the MAIN selling point in every ad I’ve seen for Shark Tale. At the end of the film, each of the main characters are shown in a still frame with the name of the actor voicing them visible on the screen. To further beat us over the head with the notion of, “look who we signed to talk in this movie,” all the actors--with the notable exception of Jack Black--essentially are just playing “themselves.” Will Smith plays a fish version of the Will Smith persona we’ve seen in every other film he’s been in. De Niro plays the same tired mobster persona he’s played to the point where he doesn’t even need to parody himself anymore. Only Black breaks from his usual “persona” to play an unusually sensitive shark, and, as a result, his was the only performance worth noting and the only one I can say I enjoyed.
Article comments
1 - MrPC
I am not sure what is worse:
"A Shark Tale"
or that crappy television show created to promote that movie,
"Father of the Pride."
Come to think of it, I can't imagine anything worse than Father of the Pride.