A lively and beautiful summer treat.

Rating: Null/10 (11 June 2003)

Fish. How the heck do you make a movie about fish? Fish are good for hooking, cleaning and frying but to make an animated adventure about them? Seems like a long shot to me. Luckily for us Pixar Studios took up the challenge and made the computer animated Finding Nemo. This is an astoundingly beautiful, touching and very funny movie aboutahfish.

The plot of Finding Nemo is simple. In a comparatively tough opening scene (for a children's movie) clownfish Marlin loses his wife and all but one of their thousand-odd eggs. The surviving egg hatches to become the titular Nemo, a feisty little fry suffering under the watchful eye of his overprotective father. One day Nemo feels particularly put upon and swims off into dangerous water. Naturally he is captured by divers and soon finds himself captive in a fish tank. Thus begins Marlin's quest to find and save his son. At first glance, this looks like standard kiddy movie fodder. Dangers are faced. Fears are overcome and (big L) Lessons are Learned. The sort of pabulum parents dread sitting through and kids quickly tire of. For the most part though Pixar successfully navigates the shoals of the mundane. They fill Finding Nemo with enough fascinating details and humorous asides that you forget you've seen essentially the same movie a hundred times on Nickelodeon. From the dental groupie denizens of Nemo's fish tank to the single-minded seagulls the movie will snag even the most adult viewer's attention throughout.
The first thing that hits you in Finding Nemo is how gorgeous the movie is. The undersea environment simply ripples with color, texture and detail, especially in opening scenes set in a crowded coral reef. Traditional cell animation cannot begin to compete with computer animation in this area.

Pixar has always been extraordinarily clever in casting the voices of their features and Finding Nemo is no exception. Albert Brooks, an actor known for his neurotic roles, is perfect as the driven father fish Marlin. Willem Dafoe as Gill, Nemo's fish tank mentor, is every old con that ever led an escape attempt. Barry Humphries, usually heard and seen as Dame Edna Everage, sounds exactly like what you'd expect a talking shark to sound like. The featured voices include Eric Bana, Bruce Spence, Elizabeth Perkins, Austin Pendleton, John Ratzenberger and Geoffrey Rush among other - all perfectly cast and all fitting their animated counterparts perfectly. The standout performance, however, is Ellen DeGeneres as Dory the bluefish. She steals the show as Marlin's enthusiastically helpful companion with an unfortunate memory problem.
Finding Nemo does have its faults. Some sequences are played at such a frenetic pace it becomes hard to sort out what is happening. In particular Marlin and Dory's encounter with a trio of over-friendly sharks suffers from a too frenzied approach. If I hadn't read that they had stumbled into a Meat-a-holic Anonymous meeting I would probably have missed the joke. This, however, is a relatively minor blip in an otherwise consistently delightful film. With its wealth of humor, vibrant color and stunning attention to detail Finding Nemo is well worth a viewing on the big screen.