How I Found Finding Nemo

Rating: 9/10 (26 May 2003)

If you can get past the first 15 minutes of Pixar's latest, you'll get a movie that is on par with their four other feature films. Finding Nemo turns out to be a big, adventure film with a lot of laughs and a heart that is barely on the good side of manipulation. Once the adventure starts, the emersion into the film begins and doesn't let you go.
The movie plays up on over-protective parents, kids overcoming their disabilities, friendships conquering obstacles, addicts joining together to be better people (uh, fish), building self-esteem, realizing and accepting strengths and curmudgeons learning to lighten up. All this in an animated, family-oriented, 'G' movie? You bet! Pixar are the masters at the making everyone happy film. They give the parents being dragged into the theater something to enjoy as well.
If only they had done something with that beginning. The films opens in a fish suburbia complete with happy families, beautiful homes and a peaceful way of life all with no hint of sardonic humor. Yes, there are people who think that is heaven, but what about those who make fun it? At least give them something to chuckle about. It's Utopia for the Family Values set and completely out of character for Pixar.
It's at this point I thought they had finally produced their first sub-standard film. That is until a barracuda changes the main characters lives forever and Albert Brooks goes into, well, Albert Brooks mode. Marlin (Albert Brooks) has a son, Nemo, who has an underdeveloped fin and therefore can't swim well. This combined with the catastrophe at the beginning of the film causes Marlin to smother Nemo. Nemo, finally fed up, rebels, ends up being caught by a diver and spirited away. Marlin sets out after Nemo and that's when the film finally picks up with some adventure and some laughs.
And when that laugh level is revved up, it's supplied by the scene-stealing Ellen DeGeneres as a blue tang named Dory. Dory is basically an idiot savant. She has a severe short-term memory loss problem. Now fish are believed to have no short-term memory so the jokes on the surface play on this; however, in a scene where Dory is faced with being alone without friends again, you wonder if it's a form of denial. She says in the scene that she doesn't want to forget anymore and that having Marlin around helps her remember because he is the only one that has stuck by her. Does she really have this problem or is it that she is so disappointed with no one understanding her that she hides everything? The scene is multi-layered and heart wrenching. Ellen plays it surprisingly well as if she identifies with what Dory is going through. That's what makes the scene work so well. Many of us have gone through the same thing and know how she feels.
There are many, many memorable scenes in the film as Marlin attempts to find Nemo who is now in a fish tank in a dentist office. One of the scenes is supplied in a superb performance by William Dafoe as Gill, an angelfish in the tank with Nemo who is from the ocean (not a pet store) and dreams of escaping and taking his new friends with him. He devises a scheme to get them out that is hair-brained and daring, but with one little plot hole that the film plays up to hilarious effect at the end. Another great scene is with a trio of sharks that have sworn off fish in the most unlikely AA meeting imaginable. Their motto: "Fish are our friends and not food!"
Finding Nemo is grand and exciting adventure that once it gets beyond it's slow opening turns into exactly what you expect from the masterminds at Pixar. A film that is imaginative and visually stunning with big adventures for everyone no matter how old they are on the outside.