Shark Tale Product Placement

The first wince comes with DreamWorks’s decision to take product placement to new depths by featuring a giant soft-drink ad in the middle of an ocean-bottom Time Square. (And underwater soft drinks are used for what?) Globe And Mail Shark Tale” is a film calculated to give us a good time, and it’s the calculation that spoils the fun. Where “Nemo” was clever, soulful, and marvelous to look at, “Tale” is manic and surprisingly ugly, with a script that leans on the shallowest aspects of hip-hop street cred while pimping for corporate product placement at every turn. Yes, your children will probably enjoy it, but do you really want to feed them more of the throwaway crud culture they get every single day? Boston Globe Product placement is everywhere, but the product names are always off by one or two letters. There?s a sushi bar that?s perpetually empty (wonder why); the ever-present news broadcaster is named Katie Current (voiced, of course, by Katie Couric); and movies from ?Scarface? to ?The Godfather? to ?Car Wash? are quoted, scrambled and skewered.