'Shark Tale' swims in the shallow end of the fantasy pool

DreamWorks' "Shark Tale" truly suffers in comparison with Hollywood's previous computer-animated, undersea fantasy-adventure, "Finding Nemo": It has little of that film's simplicity, charm, exhilarating action or staggering aquatic beauty.

MOVIE REVIEW

SHARK TALE

DIRECTORS: Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson and Rob Letterman

VOICE CAST: Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black, Martin Scorsese, Angelina Jolie

RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes

RATING: PG for mild language and crude humor

WHERE: Alderwood 7, Cinema 17, Cinerama, Columbia City, Crossroads 8, East Valley 13, Edmonds, Everett 9, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway 8, Issaquah 9, Kirkland Parkplace 6, Majestic Bay, Marysville Cinema 14, Metro, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Oak Tree, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza 12, Redmond Town Center, South Hill Mall, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C+

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It's too busy, too crowded with movie-star caricatures and tongue-in-cheek satire and clumsy product placements to be even half as likable. It's overblown and greedy and feels like more of a merchandizing scheme than a movie.

On the other hand, it entertains on a superficial level: It delivers a handful of clever sequences, and its lapses into crude humor (flatulence and vomit gags) are not so blatant as to prevent the film from being a passable baby sitter.

It takes place mostly in a tropical reef imagined as a nautical version of Midtown Manhattan, where a brash young fish named Oscar (with the face and voice of Will Smith) works in a whale wash (like a carwash, but for whales) and dreams of fame and glory.

This comes when a dropped anchor accidentally kills an invading shark, and Oscar, who happened to be nearby, gets the credit. He's proclaimed "Sharkslayer" and becomes the celebrity of the moment, lionized by reef society.

The problem is Oscar has no fighting skills, and when Don Lino (Robert De Niro), the godfather of sharks, hears of the incident, the stage is set for Oscar's comeuppance. (As you may have read, some Italian American groups are not pleased with the sharks' Italianate ethnicity.)

Also in this bouillabaisse are Oscar's loyal girlfriend (Renée Zellweger), a femme fatale fish (Angelina Jolie), a hustling blowfish who becomes Oscar's manager (Martin Scorsese) and a peace-loving, vegetarian shark (Jack Black) who becomes Oscar's ally.

Though it tries hard to be, "Shark Tale" is not an especially rewarding film for adults. Its non-stop movie references ("Car Wash," "Goodfellas," "Titanic," "Jaws") are neither imaginative nor subtle, and its sendup of contemporary culture is fairly insipid.

For those of us who came of age with the movies of the '70s, there's also something decidedly depressing about the spectacle of De Niro and Scorsese as cartoon fish, trading their artistic credibility for big bucks in a pandering kids' movie.

Kids, of course, will not care about any of this and likely will respond to Smith's hard-rapping swagger and the film's razzle-dazzle visuals and goofy humor -- though it's hard to imagine even its most enthusiastic young fans wanting to sit through it more than once.

My favorite of the film's aquarium of characters is a school of shrimp, which escapes from Don Lino's cocktail at a crucial point in the movie, later comes back for a very funny moment of revenge and is engaging and cute without benefit of a celebrity voice.

P-I movie critic William Arnold can be reached at 206-448-8185 or williamarnold@seattlepi.com.