Finding Nemo

Released 2003
Animated
Voices Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garrett, Allison Janney, Austin Pendleton, Stephen Root, Geoffrey Rush
Directed by Andrew Stanton

"Finding Nemo" has all of the usual pleasures of the Pixar animation style--the comedy and wackiness of "Toy Story" or "Monsters Inc." or "A Bug's Life." And it adds an unexpected beauty, a use of color and form that makes it one of those rare movies where I wanted to sit in the front row and let the images wash out to the edges of my field of vision. The movie takes place almost entirely under the sea, in the world of colorful tropical fish--the flora and fauna of a shallow warm-water shelf not far from Australia. The use of color, form and movement make the film a delight even apart from its story.

There is a story, though, one of those Pixar inventions that involves kids on the action level while adults are amused because of the satire and human (or fishy) comedy. The movie involves the adventures of little Nemo, a clown fish born with an undersized fin and an oversized curiosity. His father, Marlin, worries obsessively over him, because Nemo is all he has left: Nemo's mother and all of her other eggs were lost to barracudas. When Nemo goes off on his first day of school, Marlin warns him to stay with the class and avoid the dangers of the drop-off to deep water, but Nemo forgets, and ends up as a captive in the salt-water aquarium of a dentist in Sydney. Marlin swims off bravely to find his missing boy, aided by Dory, a blue tang with enormous eyes who he meets along the way.

Summary by Roger Ebert

Pixar just keeps amazing. When I saw the previews for "Finding Nemo," I thought it looked like it would be the weakest of their movies. Boy, was I wrong. "Finding Nemo" is visually stunning and a lot of fun thematically. It has a "road picture" storyline similar to "Toy Story 2," but it includes the best of their animation so far. Everything under the sea is absolutely brilliant. They even include the floating bits of debris that are naturally in water, and this detail gives the movie a reality that we haven't seen before. There are topview shots of the ocean waves that you can't tell are animation, and yet the animators don't limit themselves to rendering the natural world. They use brilliant colors to create an underwater world that seems more inviting than our own, and they're endlessly creative with the undersea life. Then they transport Nemo to a dentist's aquarium, which allows them to add a new dynamic to the story by bringing us to the human world. My favorite part of the movie was the dad getting to be the hero for a change, and it was special to watch it while holding my little boy's hand. This is a wonderful movie. --Bill Alward, June 8, 2003