Will Smith’s Hit Underwater Adventure Is Streaming For Free Right Now
Will Smith's animated movie Shark Tale is streaming for free (with ads) on Freevee.
Will Smith’s Shark Tale is one of DreamWorks’ stranger earlier offerings, but the film was (and still is) pretty popular. The combination buddy-comedy/shark mobster story assembled a star-studded cast, raked in a lot of money, and is one of the few animated movies that Smith has lent his voice to. If you’ve been meaning to revisit this 2004 animated hit, you can now watch Shark Tale for free on Freevee.
Shark Tale stars Will Smith as a fish named Oscar who becomes known as a ‘shark slayer’ after the gangster son of a shark boss is accidentally killed while pursuing him. Oscar and the shark’s vegetarian brother decide to team up and use this misconception to their advantage. Along with Smith, the film stars Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Martin Scorsese, Ziggy Marley, Doug E. Doug, Michael Imperioli, Vincent Pastore, Peter Falk, and Katie Couric.
Shark Tale was directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, and Rob Letterman with a screenplay written by Letterman and Michael J. Wilson. With Will Smith’s star power and DreamWorks being hot off the success of Shrek 2, Shark Tale managed to make quite a bit of money at the box office. The film grossed $160.9 million in the United States and Canada and $213.7 million in other countries, making the worldwide total $374.6 million. This made Shark Tale the 9th highest-grossing movie of that year and DreamWorks’ second-biggest opening weekend at the time with $47.6 million.
Of course, the financial success of Shark Tale doesn’t mean the film was universally beloved by any means. In fact, it received mostly negative reviews and currently holds a 35 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 46 percent from audiences. While performances cast members like Will Smith and Jack Black made the film enjoyable enough, people found the story pretty lacking and felt it leaned too heavily on pop-culture jokes (something that Shrek was able to do a little more successfully).
Interestingly enough, the critique wasn’t enough to stop Will Smith’s Shark Tale from nabbing a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards that year. The category wasn’t as robust at the time, and only three films were up for the award, including DreamWorks’ own Shrek 2. However, the other film was The Incredibles, so DreamWorks didn’t really stand a chance that year.
The Academy Awards show where Shark Tale lost also happened to be the first time that Chris Rock hosted the ceremony. Perhaps the true reason for Will Smith slapping him was his pent-up anger over Shark Tale losing the Oscar all those years ago. In any case, DreamWorks has only won the Best Animated Feature twice, despite getting 14 nominations so far.
Will Smith has been keeping a pretty low profile since the Oscar incident, though Chris Rock finally made some extensive jokes about it in his most recent comedy special. Right now, there aren’t any solid release dates for any of Smith’s upcoming films, so revisiting his previous work is probably your best bet for now. Although there are certainly better films from the actor, Shark Tale is available for free, and it might scratch that itch if you like pop-culture heavy jokes and early 2000s-era DreamWorks animation.
