Film Matters Magazine

Anybody that grew up within the early 2000s has probably heard about Shark Tale (Rob Letterman, Vicky Jenson, and Bibo Bergeron, 2004). Even if you have not watched the movie, you most likely still know about Lola — the confident, glittering red lionfish who gets introduced with her own intro song, “Gold Digger” by Ludacris. Thanks to the countless memes throughout social media, Shark Tale has been immortalized as a film rooted within Y2K pop culture. However, with it earning a measly 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, and with critics like Bob Longino deeming it a “…loud, visually busy, offensive in its obviousness and virtually empty computer-animated film… ,” it has largely been reduced to a “simple” movie hoarded with silly nonsense and references. While critics focused on unfavorable comparisons to other animation works, many of them missed Shark Tale’s use of queer coding and how it successfully critiques the pressure to conform within a corporate/capitalist society.

Despite making multiple lists for “failed Disney films,” Tomorrowland (2015) directed by Brad Bird, is a visually stunning, ambitious, and hopeful film that inspires young women into the STEM field, as well as calling a question that becomes more relevant everyday: How can we fix our planet?

Despite its screening at Cannes, status in the Criterion Collection, and ranking in Sight and Sound‘s greatest films list, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973) is often subject to Western readings that frame its nonlinear narrative as “difficult.” When I first encountered the film in a Parisian film studies class, classmates dismissed it as inaccessible—a reaction revealing how Hollywood-conditioned viewers misread Mambéty’s decolonial form. Critical responses beyond the classroom similarly position it as obscure or derivative, with some even comparing it to Tarantino, who emerged decades later. These readings exemplify what scholar Manthia Diawara terms “the colonial viewer syndrome”: the imposition of Western narrative expectations on films that reject them.

Uptown Girls is a 2003 romantic comedy in which a New York City socialite, Molly Gunn (played by Brittany Murphy), loses her fortune and is forced into regular employment as a nanny for an uptight little girl named Ray (played by Dakota Fanning). While Uptown Girls is a fun and heartful story of female friendship, aging, and grief, it is not always seen as such. The film’s Rotten Tomatoes reviews suggest it is difficult for many critics to fathom a woman experiencing meaningful grief. It received a 13% Rotten Tomatoes score, with many reviewers taking issue with the “whimsy” and “girlishness” of the film. One review by Geoff Pevere reads: “Can two over-pampered but fundamentally lonely persons of the blonde female persuasion bond meaningfully with each other while shopping?”