3 out of 5

Label: Geffen

Produced by: Various

The post-90s Disney resurgence ushered in a particular type of kids movie soundtrack / compilation that has continued to evolve with whatever the music zeitgeist is at the time. Take that into account with such a soundtrack’s aim – in my mind, chiefly to sell records, yes, and then to juggle being addictive for kids and tolerable for adults – and we can arrive at some equation for my feelings towards it.

Shark Tale the movie always felt like even more of a cash-in than usual, functioning in a by-then very established structure of celebrity casting and anthropomorphizing a recycle story, and I realize that such structures will never go away, but there are these mini spikes of uniqueness amongst the batch… and then the batch. And Shark Tale was in the batch, very comfortably so.

That follows for its soundtrack: points for getting a bunch of n ame artists (some easy wins with those doing voices in the film, but plenty of others) to contribute original takes, and then you parcel out some covers and new songs. Which is all well and good and did sell this thing, but besides some highlights, the “this was how we produced hit songs” vibe hovers over several songs, making them sound pretty similar, plus some fairly limited, repetitive songs from the B-team – JoJo, D12. Elsewhere, Ludacris contributes a “2004 sure was a long time ago” track called Gold Digger (to a kids movie… ), and I guess I’ve always questioned Will Smith’s appeal as a music artist, but his Got To Be Real cover with Mary J Blige feels especially phoned in, from both contributors.

Pitted against that you have some pretty standout stuff leading us in: notably two of those covers (Bob Marley; Rose Royce), but also a solid Justin Timberlake / Timbaland track. Later, India.Arie, Avast adding some R&B spice, fan_3 and Pussycat Dolls bringing the pop flair, with Cheryl Lynn and Hann Zimmer’s score the final bids to remind the parents they’re still remembered. (Zimmer’s score is also indicative of this soundtrack, though, going from orchestral to a kind of pleading pop beat.)

Points for including full credits in the booklet, and, again, I’ll allow that this soundtrack mostly did its job. However, on the parent front, I think it sounds more like the cash-grab it was – vibing with the movie – and I suspect that probably made it pretty ephemeral for kids as well.