Beautiful and fun 9/10

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2003)

Yeah, I waited till the last minute to weigh in: everyone on earth has seen this already ;)
There are very few things not to like in Pixar's 4th movie. The undersea environment was spectacular. The fishy critters were all diverse and interesting and the humor was on par with the Toy Story line. Yeah, there was the whole Di$ney-parent curse where no main character can ever seem to have BOTH parents live to see credits, and I find the forced sympathy of a lost parent to be not only overused but a lame crutch for uncreative writers... but it really was fairly well played and I'll forgive it given the overwhelming number of good things that the movie offered.
The kids managed to sit through the whole thing (which is rare even for a Pixar movie) and laughed. I enjoyed every moment of it and rarely gave a second thought about it being animated except to admire the beauty of the scenes and to pick out occational Toy Story references. All the characters were interesting and well done.
I would have given the story a 10 but it fell just short of perfect in enough places for me to note. Several cliche-ish story twists, a bit of plot stumbling and a few scenes really sort of dragged on. Call it personal preferences or whatever, but hey: a 9 is a rare gem in this summer's wasteland of lackluster blockbusters.