Water World

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2003)

Having no difficulty whatsoever getting in touch with my inner child, I took a deep breath and dove underwater for Pixar's latest film. "Finding Nemo" is no mere cartoon. I don't think I could like any animated character better than I do those "Toy Story" costars, Woody and Buzz, (actually I like Woody and Buzz more than most "real" actors) but Marlin (the ever-neurotic Albert Brooks) and Dory (a hilarious Ellen DeGeneres) are a close second to those screen buddies. Pixar has outdone itself, creating a water world of such splendor that you forget it's drawn with a pen (or a computer). Halfway through the film, when Nemo is captured in the dentist's aquarium, and Marlin and Dorie are two small fish in the vast blue sea, I gasped at the impossibility of them ever seeing each other again. How in the world will they find Nemo? It's a marvel that director Andrew Stanton makes us care enough to help plot escape strategies. The menacing and misunderstood Bruce (named after Speilberg's mechanical fish?), played by Dame Edna, is just too funny, and Stanton himself also does a mean surfer dude as the voice of Crush the seaturtle. Willem Dafoe is sadly perfect as Gil and that underwater sea creature, the one that lives in the very deepest depths of the ocean looks like it's right out of the "Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. Pixar certainly put to rest the argument "do fish feel?" Of course they do. And they have a pretty good sense of humor too. Don your water wings and fly to see this one.