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Shark Tale treads gently on Finding Nemo's fins, playing on the "friendly vegetarian shark" prospect. However, whereas Nemo was state of the art, wonderfully written and un-measurably charming, Shark Tale is sporadically humorous, occasionally sweet and generally entertaining. There is a stellar cast associated with this picture, including Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, Renee Zellwegger, Angelina Jolie and Martin Scorsese. Yet for all the muscle they managed to muster, there is a lack of "star" feel about this movie. This is not the starry juggernaught it should be, more a camper van of stars (or a van of camper stars?).

The script delivers a few laugh out loud moments, but fails to deliver on a consistent basis. A few belly laughs a quality comedy do not make.
Annoyingly, while the script lacks any real colour or depth, the animation does not. It's so bright. I was a bit pleepy when I watched it, but the blazing colours started to burn through my retina. Ouch, was not to pretty. As for animation quality, it was passable. After the visual feasts of Shrek, Nemo and the like, Shark Tale was fairly basic. It harked back to the old animation of unrealistic representation, rather than trying to develop textures and tangible visual excitement. While not always a bad thing, when you set an animation underwater you open up a world of possibility, a world not many people experience, and they should have used that to their advantage. Unfortunately they missed the boat on that one (ha ha ha).

The cast is as impressive as the script allows. Smith's Oscar is actually a little annoying creep. You see many characters fall for the gold digger in the films, but few of the gold diggers announce themselves as "just chasing the money". Jolie's tart fish admits just that however, and is pathetic above being dislikeable. The highlights of this Galacticos of stars are Mr Black and Mr De Niro. Black manages to stay away from the usual manic performance, and delivers a subtle and vulnerable, erm, Great White Shark. De Niro's Don Lino is a wonderful caricature of all his American Italian characters of past. Although he has attempted this before (the exceptionally average "Analyse..." movies) he has more success here due to the setting.

Although the creators have done a good job of creating likeness in the animation of their real life voice counterparts, and there are a few good laughs, Shark Tale falls just short of a must see movie. Hopefully the creators will learn that to make a quality movie they have to do more than stick "From the studio that brought you Shrek" on the front of the tin.