stale, if not quite dead fish

Rating: 6/10 (25 November 2008)

I'm a fairly big animation fan, so it's a bit surprising that I never caught up with this when it played theatrically; I'm also a big fan of Albert Brooks, who does the lead voice for Marlin, and that's probably why I did get around to this now.
First off, the animation is just gorgeous. I think this might be the best-looking Pixar film I'd seen before "Wall-E" -- something about the process just seems to work so well on an underwater adventure, and I liked the cartoonish, lumpy look to the humans as well. Everything is colorful and flowing and moving and exciting to look at -- the filmmakers undoubtedly spent significant time around coral reefs or watching films of them, because the film really does convey the sense of constant motion and teeming life very well, and the animation process was up to it.
The storyline, however, just didn't cut it for me. Marlin's a single (clownfish) parent who early on loses his only surviving son, Nemo (Alexander Gould) and goes on a harrowing quest through hundreds of miles of treacherous open seas to find him and eventually rescue him from the dentist's office aquarium he's ended up in, along the way meeting up with ditzy, forgetful helper Dory (Ellen Degeneres). Like nearly every Disney or big-budget animated film these days, the film is filled with cameos from big stars, which doesn't really do anything for me beyond the "oh cool that's Dafoe" factor; it increases the budget I'm sure, but does it really help tell the story any better, and does it guarantee more box office? It's often a distraction; here it neither helped nor hindered my enjoyment, which was overall medium -- I just couldn't get involved in the story or the characters. Brooks was a big part of the problem, or his characterization; I hesitate to blame him, he was cast as essentially the straight man for much of the film, and his brand of humor is anything but juvenile and thus just doesn't jibe with a kid's film. DeGeneres fare better and was the most interesting actor/character, but on the whole this was for me a fairly charmless, too-long roller coaster towards the inevitable happy ending. I suppose I'm sounding the grouch, but I have liked all of the other Pixar films I've seen; this one just didn't hit a chord for me. Still worth seeing for the phenomenal look, so I'm calling it "ehhh"; rented on DVD.