This was a Children's Movie???

Rating: 1/10 (23 August 2005)

This review contains spoilers!
For everything that is visually brilliant and realistic in "Finding Nemo", there is so much wrong with this Pixar effort. So, where do I start? Okay, I'll start where the movie starts: with the violent death of "Coral" and 399 baby fish (no joke--a very scary-looking barracuda attacks the family less than four minutes into the film!). I'm not sure if the title should have been "Did Coral Really Die?", because I spent the whole movie waiting for the happy reunion. Sadly, there was none. Poignant and original, but way too intense for kids.
(The anemone they chose to raise their expected family of 400 was too small, anyway!)
This movie starts off cute (after the opening pathos, of course), with lovable characters (the young sea creatures at the reef), and the tone-deaf stingray teacher is somewhat original and funny. After this, however, the whole thing goes off into one nonsense scene after another. Granted: Fish don't talk, but better movies than this have talking fish.
To start, this movie has its own version of "Jar-Jar Binks" (an annoying character from Lucasfilm's "Star Wars" who is credited with utterly destroying the verisimilitude of that franchise), and her name is "Dory". Annoying, because her one, well-overextended joke is that she has "short-term memory loss". This can be taken as either cute or disturbing, depending on how you choose to enjoy the film. I chose disturbing, because I kept anticipating that she would just snap, forget everything, and abandon poor "Marlin" forever. Every time her memory lapses, its as if she's met Marlin for the first time. That distracts from the thread of the story and makes her a very tenuous ally at best. (Not to mention, this borders on making fun of serious memory-loss diseases in the name of entertainment. That in itself is an uncomfortable distraction.)
Next, for those who dislike Pauly Shore-speak, there's "Crush" (voiced by the movie's director), a sea turtle, who couldn't be a more stereotypical ripoff of Sean Penn's "Spicoli" character in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High". His hybrid, Muscle Beach-meets-Valley Girl on Valium lingo is so passé as to make him look like more of a dork than the "cool dude" that the filmmakers seem to be trying to pull off. He'd be a little more likable if they hadn't tried so hard to make him "hip". He's friendly, but over-the-top.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, there's a dubious, wildly inappropriate scene built around the very unfunny topic of alcoholics anonymous in this "family" effort, and it involves vegetarian(!) sharks, who sputter support-group catch phrases such as "Remember the steps!", "Intervention!", that kids just won't understand (or care about). If this was meant to be humor for the adults in the audience, it fails miserably, because the subject is based on an issue of human suffering and misery! This is Rush Limbaugh humor, and is out of place in a Disney picture. The premise is unbelievable as well as unnecessary for the flow of the story (which gets more and more inane throughout). All of this leads up to the most desperate, if not clichéd, "oldest trick in the book": A fart gag involving anti-ship mines!!!
Midway through, there is a bunch of confusing jibber-jabber that only people who work in dentist's offices will appreciate. This makes for some chuckles.
A major flaw is the inclusion of the bizarre, out-of-place nighttime initiation ceremony for "Nemo" in the fish tank. It seems to be another attempt at a more mature level of humor, but there's no suspense at all, and I found myself joining the lot of whispers of "this is stupid" when Nemo swims through the "Ring of Fire", (which is nothing more than a Fountain of Bubbles). Moreover, if this was the initiation for all of the other tank-mates, how did "Peach", the sea star, make it into the club? (I digress). This scene looks like something out of a "deleted Scenes" menu on a DVD.
Finally, "Darla". Every movie has to have a "countdown" to some anticipated confrontation with an adversary. This one is an apparently disturbed 7-year-old who looks all too deliberately twisted and grotesque. Okay, we get it. She might kill Nemo! (You see, because the owner of the fish tank puts a picture of the little girl HOLDING A DEAD FISH in plain, direct view of the tank-mates.)
Despite looking spectacular, this movie does not have the sense of adventure of other Disney/Pixar films. Much of what is supposed to be funny isn't; much of what is supposed to be climactic isn't as well. Some content might be questionable. Still, it's a work of art, into which much effort was put. It's not the greatest film, but there are, after all, other fish in the sea.