Fishing for courage

Rating: 6/10 (1 December 2015)

"Finding Nemo" is an American animated movie from 12 years ago and certainly one of the most known animated films in history, not only because it is an Oscar winner, but because it solidified Pixar's and Disney's collaborative efforts that went on till this date. I personally see a couple parallels to the classic "Little Mermaid" from almost 15 years earlier. Of course, the film takes place almost entirely under the sea, but it is also about a difficult father-child relationship and about one part of that relationship in particular, namely finding the right approach to life and letting go, i.e. find a way that will actually help him bond with his offspring again. A great film for fathers. There is not that much memorable music in here, but also lots of heart, even if a crucial love story is missing. I'm not sure if I would call Marlin/Dory one and if I do, then it's still not the core plot of the film.
Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich are obviously known to everybody with an interest in animated films from the last years. Same probably goes for Bob Peterson, who is a voice actor in here as well. Still, there are also "real" actors lending their voices to characters in this one, such as Albert Brooks, Willem Dafoe, Allison Janney or Geoffrey Rush, a personal favorite of mine. He fits nicely in here with the Australian background. Nothing to say about the animation in this 100-minute movie. It's really good. The characters are all interesting and almost all of them fun too. Even the scary sharks bring some comedy when they try to work on their image problem early on. The only really scary creatures in here were the jellyfish. Oh wait, that's not correct. The fishermen were 10 times scarier and also with the final breaking free scene probably the main antagonists.
I personally would say I enjoyed this film, but I also think one watch is enough. The story is fine, but it does not work on an emotional level for me as it aspires. With the exception of the truly sad prologue and Dory's "I don't wanna forget." maybe. The comedy is pretty good from start to fi(ni)sh with all its funny scenes and dialogs, especially Dory's. She is a crucial addition and brings great comic relief during the entire movie. Not too long anymore until we get the sequel to this one. Hopefully they'll come up with something good again, but I am positive they will. It is certainly a challenge to build something around Dory's amnesia, but it looks like they took the possibly easy way out with her gone missing this time, so the story will probably focus more on the two clownfish. Until then, "Finding Nemo" is worth checking out in case of the unlikely scenario that you really haven't seen it yet.