Straight to sushi

Pun-laden 'Shark Tale' gets caught up in day-old typecasting

BY JOHN ANDERSON | STAFF WRITER

October 1, 2004

(PG). You'll sleep with the fishes. Animated fin-fest in which a mob shark is accidentally killed and an unlikely hero gets the credit. Lukewarm. With the voices of Will Smith, Jack Black, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Renée Zellweger, Angelina Jolie. Written by Rob Letterman, Damian Shannon, Mark Swift and Michael J. Wilson. Directed by Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson and Rob Letterman. 1:30 (crude humor, mild language). At area theaters.

If "Shark Tale" is anti-Italian, then it is probably anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-gay and anti- fish. Frankly, the underwater mob characters voiced by Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese seem more New York than they do anything else. So maybe it's simply anti-urban.

But the question has been raised, not just because this animated comedy features DeNiro and Scorsese as gangster fish, but because DreamWorks managed to add potential insult to potential insult by opening it on Oct.1, the first day of Italian American Heritage Month. What's certain is that there's nothing in "Shark Tale" that's newly damaging to Italians. Or any other ethnic group. Which is actually symptomatic of the movie's freshness problem.

Is there any doubt that Oscar (Will Smith) - the inadvertently celebrated "shark slayer" once that falling anchor hits Frankie the gangster (Michael Imperioli) - is black? Not with all those hip-hop references, soul handshakes and (worse) his little graffiti-spraying cohorts. Lenny (Jack Black), the problem son of Don Lino (De Niro), is clearly both Jewish in his humor and gay in his dilemma - confessing that you're a vegetarian shark is comparable in "ST" to coming out of the closet. That Angelina Jolie's vampish Lola isn't referred to as a largemouth something or other is the only gag the screenwriters seem to have missed.

Are the actors working for scale? Is it a boy-meets-gill story? How come there's no character named Bob?

There is a newswoman (newsfish?) named Katie Current (Katie Couric), allusions to Mussel Crowe and Kelpy Kreme doughnuts (I think that's what it was) and the center of the universe is the local Whale Wash, where barnacles and tooth decay provide the yucky stuff that keeps 5-year-olds squealing. But even they will remember the comedy techniques, from way way back in "Shrek 2."

Basically, "Shark's Tale" is a pun-laden parable about being who you are. ("Nobody loves a nobody," Oscar whales, although someone does - Renée Zellweger's faithful Angie, even if Oscar won't find out 'til later.) Perhaps the points against the film made by the National Coalition Against Racial, Religious and Ethnic Stereotyping (which protested to DreamWorks honcho Steven Spielberg) are moot, considering that De Niro, Scorsese, Imperioli and Vincent Pastore are playing mobsters, Ziggy Marley voices one of the hit man Rasta jellyfish and Smith seems OK recycling his own share of racial cliches.

All we know is that if you decide to see "Shark Tale," go to a mall where there are other movies playing. Leave the kids. Take the cannolis.