‘Shark Tale’ is a small fish in a large pond

In theaters

SHARK TALE, directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron and Rob Letterman, written by Letterman and Michael Wilson, 92 minutes, rated PG.

After you’ve had “Finding Nemo” on your plate, the last thing you want is a weak second course to finish the meal. Shark sounds interesting, but if you’re going to serve it, it better have bite and it better be memorable.

Otherwise, people will leave the table disappointed.

It’s just that pressure that must have faced the folks at DreamWorks Animation, whose new movie, “Shark Tale,” draws natural comparisons to its computer-generated counterpart and predecessor, the kinder, gentler “Nemo.”

As directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron and Rob Letterman from a script by Letterman and Michael Wilson, “Shark Tale” is a colorful, jive-talking minnow that runs in shallow waters.

For inspiration, it doesn’t seek its own imagination. Instead, it trolls the depths of pop culture and catches its ideas by borrowing from a clutch of other movies – “The Godfather,” “Finding Nemo,” “Jaws,” “Analyze This,” “Goodfellas” and “Car Wash” chief among them.

Unfortunately, by borrowing so liberally from so many, it misses what it needed most to make it special – originality.

Steeped in racial, gender, sexual and ethnic stereotypes, the film is a collision of two stories. First, there’s Oscar (voice of Will Smith), a Whale Wash attendant hoping to move on up to a better life with girlfriend Angie (Renee Zellweger), when a gambling debt with his boss, the pufferfish Sykes (Martin Scorsese), gets in the way.

Second is Lenny, a closeted great white shark who lives in fear of his father, Don Lino (Robert De Niro), a menacing, masculine Italian who wants Lenny to toughen up.

When Lenny’s brother, Frankie (Michael Imperioli), is accidentally killed by an anchor, Oscar happens to be on the scene and senses an opportunity. If he takes the credit for Frankie’s death, he’ll be rewarded with fame and fortune in his reef community, which fears sharks. It’s a situation to which Lenny readily agrees to allow to unfold – so long as Oscar allows Lenny to live out the rest of his life as a peaceful dolphin.

With its theme secured (“There’s danger in being something you aren’t, kids”), “Shark Tale” swims with it. What it finds along the way are a handful of selling points – a story that begins well, artistry and style to spare in the bright, urban sea settings that recall Manhattan’s Times Square, a character in newsfish Katie Current (Katie Couric), who is every bit as pushy and as arrogant as Couric herself, and another character in Angelina Jolie’s sexpot Lola, who moves with the sort of va-va-voom hustle that suggests she’s the very definition of undulation.

Still, parts are parts, and “Shark Tale” is made up of too many of them to suit. This isn’t so much a movie for kids as it is a movie for adults, who will smile at the references they know all too well from other movies.

Grade: B-

On video and DVD

SUPER SIZE ME, written and directed by Morgan Spurlock, 96 minutes, unrated.

Morgan Spurlock’s documentary, “Super Size Me,” features a bit of shocking news. It attests that as a society, Americans don’t get enough exercise, we eat too much of the wrong food, and we’re becoming fat as a result.

Apparently, we stuff ourselves with too much junk, we’re carb addicts, we’re too dependent on our cars for transportation, a large percentage of us are just plain fat and getting fatter, and we don’t have the willpower to turn it around.

As a result, tens of millions have become morbidly obese, so much so that you can’t escape the daily media deluge of what can only be termed a growing epidemic.

The finger-pointing that takes place here isn’t directed at personal responsibility – which is almost completely, absurdly overlooked – but at McDonald’s, the fast-food giant whose fat-laden food is apparently a major contributor to the burgeoning American waistline.

In an effort to prove his point that junk food is bad for you – as if we needed proof, as if it were somehow a surprise – Spurlock, a 33-year-old man in “superb shape” (three doctors say so), decided to eat nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days straight. If he was asked by a clerk whether he’d like to super size his meal, the plan was that he would gamely agree.

As such, Spurlock gained 25 pounds during his experiment, while in the process essentially destroying his health and turning his liver into pate.

What saves the movie from being 96 minutes of self-serving, attention-getting hokum has nothing to do with Spurlock’s new-found flab. Instead, the movie works best when he pulls a Michael Moore and exposes what people don’t want you to know – such as the embarrassing state of our school-lunch programs, which dump fast-food on kids because it’s cheap to do so, or how marketing campaigns and cultural shifts have allowed fast-food to put the screws to our arteries.

Otherwise, the film is little more than a low-budget, sophomoric stunt built around soft-core science. Too much of it feels like a gimmick. When it occurs to you that Spurlock might have done all of this for an easy shot at fame, the movie throws a clot from which it never recovers.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 Bangor and WCSH 6 Portland, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.