Cert: U
Starring (the voices of): Will
Smith, Jack Black, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger
Released:15th October 2004
Oscar (Smith) is the proverbial
(and literal) little fish in a big pond; he has high aspirations but bad ideas
and worse luck. But through a bizarre series of events he becomes known as the
reef’s ‘Shark Slayer’; a title that receives no respect but a lot of attention
from the father of the two sharks he claims to have slayed. And the father
happens to be the Don of the piscine mafia (De Niro).
From the creators of Shrek comes … Well, that should be
promising enough and it was not a disappointment. Whereas Pixar designed a fish
film in a fish environment, Dreamworks have created a film with fish behaving
more like humans; living in houses, wearing clothes, having hands (of sorts).
They’ve even gone to the extent of designing the fish’s faces to be a likeness
of the actors’ (De Niro’s mole, Zellweger’s jaunty mouth, etc) which takes a bit
of getting used to but kind of makes it easier to accept the characters.
It’s a think-lite storyline which
means the kids can keep up, there are enough jokes in there that are beyond the
ken of the little-uns (mainly the mafia movie references) to keep the folks
happy, the visuals are stunning and the animation of the characters is
flawless.
Dreamworks are proving they can
deliver as well as Disney on the production front but they seem to add an extra
element to their script; it’s a little bit darker, a bit more cynical and of
course they have yet to scar the psyches of our children with storylines that
focus on parents and children either trying to kill each other* or at least
hating each other**.
*See Snow
White, Bambi, Peter Pan, Lion King.
** See
Cinderella, Pinocchio, Finding Nemo.
