What Took Me So Long: This looked like a lazy Nemo rip off.
Why I Saw It: (Club 50) I liked Finding Nemo. Using the theory that something half as good as that is still pretty good, I rolled the dice on this one. It's a weirdly impressive voice cast. Dreamworks always seems more concerned with attaching famous faces to the voices. Martin Scorsese seems like an odd coup, for example. He does a lot in front of the cameo. Normally small parts and often as himself. I wonder if they only thought to get him after deciding that the sharks would be thinly disguised Italian mafiosos.
Why I Wish I Hadn't: I'm not sure what the lesson learned in this movie is supposed to be. It sort of has a message about being true to yourself and not letting fame get to your head. It isn't a strong message or presented in a valuable way. That leaves this movie as a collection of jokes. There's the other problem: the difference between universally funny and telling a lot of kind of jokes. The best movies, obviously, go for universal laughs. Pixar, Disney, and certain Dreamworks movies like How to Train Your Dragon are great at that. This seems to follow the Shrek model of throwing as many jokes, some for kids, some for adults, some for head trauma patients and hope that enough of them work. It works great in Shrek (the earlier movies, at least). This is an example of the formula failing. Who are we kidding though, the biggest issue with this movie is that it isn't Finding Nemo. Plain and simple.*
*By deduction, does that mean Will Smith is a poor man's Albert Brooks? This is leading down a very dark rabbit hole, er, minnow hole.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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