******** kid flick, with fish, amazing animation, lots of laughs

Rating: 8/10 (9 April 2010)

All children and families will want to watch this beautifully-animated film. It's all colorful 3-d graphics and a joy to watch. There are a few opportunities to learn things about fishes, but it's mostly about the journey to reunite father and son and about the laughs. There are lots of funny lines delivered by comedic geniuses Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres. Some small children will be frightened in two parts: The scenes with the sharks from about 19:15 to 24:30, and the part with the deep-sea angler fish from 33:00 to 35:15. The bit in the beginning with the barracuda would be scary but it's over very quickly.
Like nearly all popular children's movies, this one follows the formula where the child is separated from the parents early in the film. In this one the mother dies and the child (OK, a clown fish, not a child) is separated from his father. Reunion would seem impossible if not for the interventions of a series of colorful characters with remarkable abilities and unimaginable good luck.