MOVIE REVIEW

Finding Nemo  (2003)

Voices: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Eric Bana
Director: Andrew Stanton

Rating: G

Studio: Disney/Pixar

Release Date: 5.30.03

Review Posted: 5.30.03

Spoilers: Minor

By Sara Michelle Fetters

Pixar Floats to the Top with "Finding Nemo"

If only my hometown Seattle Mariners had batting averages like the group at Pixar does. Sure Ichiro, Edgar Martinez and Brett Boone are all hitting above .300, but Disney’s favorite computer animation superstars are currently batting 1.000 (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc.) with all four films making my year-end top ten. Seeing that each takes five or more years to animate and bring to life, those are impressive numbers.

Make that five-for-five, for with their first summer offering – the wildly imaginative Finding Nemo – Pixar officially stakes their claim to being the best animation studio bar none. Well, at least this side of Japan. I’m sure Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke director Hayao Miyazaki would disagree. Still, as far as American animation goes, Pixar is top gun, and Finding Nemo may just be their best yet.

It’s definitely the group’s most emotional and adult film. Marlin (Albert Brooks) is an overly neurotic clownfish who loses his wife and entire family of un-hatched eggs to a vicious predator. All of them save one whom he names Nemo (Alexander Gould) after his dead wife’s last wish, promising to protect his young son no matter what.

But children are destined to grow up, and over-protection always comes with a price. In this case, that price is Nemo swimming off of the reef on which they live to go out into the open ocean and touch the bottom of a boat. Partly a dare from some kids during their first day of school, partly to prove his small flipper isn’t a hindrance, this act of defiance on Nemo’s part is mostly a way to prove to his dad he can finally stop babying him. So, Marlin’s devastation is that much more palpable when his young son, after succeeding in his quest to touch the bottom of the boat, is scooped up by an exploring diver and whisked away to destinations unknown.

With only a pair of goggles lost by the diver as his only clue, the paranoid clownfish sets out to find his lost son. Along the way, he picks up some help from a friendly bluefish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) who just happens to be able to read English. Only problem; she’s also a victim of short-term memory loss, meaning she’s just as apt to forget talking to you two seconds after introductions as she is the name and address of the owner of the goggles.

No matter; friendship and adventure ensues nonetheless as Marlin and Dory make their way across the ocean on the their way to Sydney coming into contact with stoner sea turtles, a school of trout adapt at synchronized sigh language, a vicious deep sea hunter, a field of forgotten human landmines and a life-zapping bailiwick of floating jellyfish. Best of all, they meet up with a trio of sharks named Bruce (Barry Humphries), Anchor (Eric Bana) and Chum (Bruce Spence). They’re going through AA-style meetings helping them to give up eating fish, and Marlin and Dory are lured to their gathering on "bring a buddy to," err, "lunch" day.

While his dad is trying to fight the ocean in search of him, Nemo is making friends, himself. Thrown into a seaside dentist’s (Bill Hunter) aquarium, he’s quickly introduced to a menagerie of aquatic life including a blowfish named Bloat (Brad Garrett), a starfish named Coral (Elizabeth Perkins) and another fin-damaged critter named Gil (Willem Dafoe). A la The Great Escape, Gil has been trying to get out of the tank and back to the ocean for ages and, with Nemo’s help, he and the gang just might make it.

With each successive film, Pixar’s movies get more and more amazing. That’s definitely the here. Finding Nemo is easily the single most gorgeous film I’ve seen this year. The animated renderings of underwater life are exquisite, like nothing the cinematic world has seen before. The way things move and bob, turn and roll, swoop and soar are just incredible.

What’s most impressive, though, is how Pixar’s creative teams manage to keep hitting that delicate balancing act of kid-friendly entertainment that adult’s will adore just as much as their children do. While the themes in here are easily the most advanced the group has attempted, it’s nothing children who’ve seen Bambi, Pinocchio or The Lion King haven’t seen before. Director Andrew Stanton’s story is so right on, so tight and on the money, it’s hard not to be moved to tears as the movie progresses to its heartfelt coda.

As always in Disney movies – whether made by Pixar or the studio itself – the voice work is impeccable. And while Brooks undeniably shines as the fatherly Marlin; it is DeGeneres that steals the show. Needless to say, just expect children to be trying to speak whale for the rest of the year.

What else is there to say? Finding Nemo is a beautiful, timeless film that once more establishes the geniuses at Pixar as the true dream team when it comes to computer animated filmmaking. This is definitely one film worth diving in to.

Rating: 4 out of 4

TOP