'Shark Tale' is not just one of Dreamworks Animation's worst films ever, it is one of the worst animated films I have ever seen.

 

It is relatively easy to see the inspiration behind the premise: 'Let's do for gangster films what 'Shrek' did for fairytales...but with fish because 'Finding Nemo' made a lot of money'. And so from this seed, Dreamworks grew this disaster.

 

Why this film fails so badly is not because it has fish, or that it channels 'The Godfather', its because the film serves as one big pop-culture inside joke that lacks any actual humour. Children won't get many of the references while adults will gag at the immature fart gags (pun intended) and unfunny characters.

 

Oscar, the main protagonist, is so arrogant and unlikeable that he makes the villain seem loveable and his face is distractingly shaped like his voice actor, Will Smith. Lenny the Shark, played by Jack Black, meanwhile is plain annoying, and seriously, a vegetarian shark?

 

A vegetarian shark?

 

Like 'Shrek', songs are used heavily, and while they never reach the levels of that franchise's soundtrack, they're hardly the worst part of the film.

 

But back to those pop-culture references and product placement.

 

How can a fish own a Playstation?

 

Why do they live in penthouse apartments?

 

How do they know the 'Jaws' theme or the 'Titanic' one?

 

The animation itself is also terrible and loaded with errors, which makes it, like the story, come across as lazy.

 

'Shark Tale' is the manifestation of all that is wrong with Dreamworks Animation's style and how far they had fallen by 2004 since their original vision of 'The Prince of Egypt' as a rival of Walt Disney Animation, or 'Shrek' when as competition for Pixar.

 

Lets hope it doesn't get worse than this.

 

Score: 1/10