Tagline: A new school’s going to rule…
Shark Tale movie storyline. Oscar is a fast-talking little fish whose big dreams have a habit of landing him in hot water. Lenny is a great white shark with a sensitive side…and a secret-he’s a vegetarian. When a great white lie turns Oscar into an improbable hero and the truth about Lenny makes him an outcast, these two become the most unlikely of friends.
“Shark Tale” stars the voices of Academy Award nominee Will Smith as Oscar, a hustler who has always been able to fin-agle his way out of trouble, until now; two-time Academy Award winner Robert De Niro as Don Lino, a great white shark at the top of the Reef’s food chain; Academy Award winner Renée Zellweger as Angie, the beautiful angelfish who harbors a secret crush on Oscar; Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie as the femme fatale, Lola, a cross between a lion fish and a dragonfish, who uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants; Jack Black as Don Lino’s son Lenny, a great white shark who is a closet vegetarian; and multiple Oscar-nominated director Martin Scorsese as Sykes, a puffer fish who is full of hot air and never misses an opportunity to make a few extra clams.
Rounding out the main cast are: Doug E. Doug and Ziggy Marley as Bernie and Ernie, two Rastafarian jellyfish with a stinging sense of humor; Michael Imperioli as Don Lino’s oldest son, Frankie, a chip off the old shark; Vincent Pastore as Luca, an oily octopus, which makes him the perfect right-hand, left-hand, right-hand, left-hand man; veteran actor Peter Falk as Don Ira Feinberg, a shark who is long in the tooth, but still has plenty of bite left; and Katie Couric as the Reef’s top anchorfish, Katie Current.
About the Film
“Shark Tale” is an undersea comedy that gives new meaning to the phrase “sleeping with the fishes.” Executive producer Jeffrey Katzenberg remarks, “`Shark Tale’ shares the same kind of sensibility as `Shrek’ in that it’s a little irreverent, a little subversive, and very much a play on a genre. Just as `Shrek’ was a send-up of fairy tales, this film takes on the classic mob film genre, turning it upside down and inside out and just having a lot of fun with it.”
Director Vicky Jenson came to “Shark Tale” with more than a passing familiarity with “Shrek’s” sensibilities, having been a director on the franchise’s first Oscar-winning blockbuster. She observes, “In much the same way as `Shrek,’ `Shark Tale’ had both great comedic possibilities and great heart. I thought it would be fun to do a mob comedy spoof with an urban backdrop, but put it under the sea.”
Director Rob Letterman, who also co-wrote the “Shark Tale” screenplay with Michael J. Wilson, acknowledges, “It has elements of a pop-culture parody, but it’s also a romantic comedy and an action comedy and also has moments in which we root for the characters and believe in them. I think it has something in it for everybody.”
“`Shark Tale’ is the story of a little fish who tells a big lie so he can get what he thinks he wants in life-fame and fortune and respect…and even love,” director Bibo Bergeron offers. “But all he has to do is open his eyes and see that everything he wants was there all along. The good life is right in front of him; he just doesn’t see it. I think that’s something anyone could relate to in some way.”
Jenson, Bergeron and Letterman teamed to helm the computer-animated project, with each spearheading a different facet of the production. Producer Bill Damaschke expounds, “Vicky has a remarkable ability for directing actors, and brings her unique sense of humor and point of view to the story. Bibo has a tremendous animation background and had his own animation studio, so he was the one out there every day directing the lighters, animators and effects artists.
He has tremendous vision where those departments are concerned. Rob, who co-wrote the screenplay, was part of our brain trust of people crafting the story, and we discovered early on that his sensibilities about the movie were very much in line with what we wanted to achieve. We were very fortunate to have three such passionate people with different specialties, so even though there was a lot of collaboration, they each had a different focus.”
The production of “Shark Tale” marks a milestone for DreamWorks Animation, in that it is the first computer-animated feature to be produced entirely through a new state-of-the-art CG pipeline at the studio’s Glendale, California campus. In fact, it is the first high-end, all-CG feature film to be produced entirely in southern California, as northern California had been the predominant base for computer animation for more than a decade.
“We set out to build the first new CG pipeline of the 21st century from scratch, and we picked HP to help us achieve it because there is no one better,” Katzenberg says, referring to DreamWorks’ ongoing technology partnership with Hewlett-Packard. “We had enormous technological hurdles to overcome and, together, we solved those problems. It’s been an invaluable collaboration.”
Producer Janet Healy notes, “Looking back, putting together a brand new CG pipeline in Los Angeles while assembling an entire crew for the movie was rather daunting. We ended up with a remarkable group of people from all types of disciplines-from people with PhDs and computer science degrees to those with fine arts degrees…and sometimes both. There are physicists and artists, and people who understand how light works in a physical world teamed with people who understand lighting and camera movement. Finding ways to have those people work together to their, and our, best advantage was one of the most satisfying things about producing `Shark Tale.’”
Working on her first animated feature, producer Allison Lyon Segan observes, “Animation involves an ever-widening collaboration. It starts with a small group of people in a room throwing story ideas around, and it becomes more and more collaborative as it goes from storyboards, to a camera pass, to the animators and so on. Each step morphs into something else and adds to the teamwork. We were very lucky to have people who elevated our game with every step.”
Shark Tale (2004)
Directed by: Bibo Bergeron, Vicky Jenson, Victoria Jenson
Starring: Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger, Angelina Jolie, Jack Black, Martin Scorsese, Ziggy Marley, Vincent Pastore, Katie Couric, David Soren
Screenplay by: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift
Production Design by: Dan St. Pierre
Film Editing by: Nick Fletcher, Peter Lonsdale, John Venzon
Art Direction by: Seth Engstrom, Ron Lukas, Sam Michlap
Music by: Jared Lee Gosselin, Hans Zimmer
MPAA Rating: PG for some mild language and crude humor.
Distributed by: Dreamworks Pictures
Release Date: October 1, 2004
Views: 401
