Pixar's best since Bug's Life- The voice work corresponds magnificently with the artwork

Rating: 10/10 (11 June 2003)

Finding Nemo, from co-directors Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich (who have worked as directors on past pixar films like Bug's life and Toy Story 2) have devised an adventure film that takes the viewer far beyond anything imaginable with Little Mermaid. In fact, much of the humor and dialogue reminded me of the sophistication that went with an animated movie like Antz, where the top celebrity personalities came forth to give voice to wonderful creature creations.
And speaking of Antz, this time there is a neurotic, obsessive caricature of a comic in Finding Nemo, here named Marlin and played by Albert Brooks. After his wife, a clown fish, and his hundreds of eggs are devoured by a larger fish, he finds one egg left and becomes compulsive in securing it's safety. His son Nemo, it turns out, gets caught in a diver's net and taken to a Dentist's office in Sydney, Australia. This sets Marlin off on his quest across the ocean, along with a fish who forgets things as soon as their mentioned, voiced by Ellen Degeneres. They encounter sharks in rehab, turtles with Californian accents, a whale (quasi-Pinnochio there), and much more, all the while little Nemo, inside the fish-tank and renamed Sharkbate, starts to gain the courage his father never considered he had, and vice-versa.
The Pixar team, like in their previous treats, deliver worlds that usually can only exist in the imagination - the under-the-ocean scenes, making up about 65 percent of the film, are obviously breathtaking in design while not going overboard in realism, and the scenes in the dentist office and on the pier are precise too. It's like we've thought we've been here before, but now the filmmakers take us right into the nexus of it. This splendor, along with the voice work by Brooks, Degeneres, Willem Dafoe as the leader of the fish-tank pack, Geoffrey Rush as a pelican, and all the supporting parts, give anyone in any age group the finest animated spectacle of the summer.
By the way, those seagulls are the funniest thing Pixar's come up with since the aliens in Toy Story!