Cruelest beginning for a kids' movie . . .

Rating: 6/10 (16 April 2005)

Okay, if you don't want to know anything about the beginning of the movie, stop reading. *** Our movie begins with idyllic life on the reef. We find two clownfish, Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Coral (Elizabeth Perkins) enjoying their new home (a sea anemone). He's concerned it's not big enough, she says it will be just fine, and they check on their 500 children, which are quivering fish fetuses in translucent fish eggs. Ah, how nice, how cute! Suddenly though, out of nowhere, a barracuda shows up and attacks the home. Marlin does the best he can, telling Coral to hide inside the anemone; however, Coral's concerned about the "kids" and goes to save them. The barracuda then swats Marlin unconscious into the protective tendrils of his home, and everything fades to black. When Marlin comes to, Coral has disappeared (we assume she's become dinner) and every single one of the eggs has been either destroyed or eaten except for one -- Nemo.
Of course, as if killing Marlin's wife and kids off wasn't cruel enough, Nemo suffers from a birth defect, which results in him having a "gimp fin." Dad refers to it as Nemo's lucky fin, but at this point, I'm just thinking that there's nothing lucky about this family of fish.
From here on, the movie takes on a decidedly lighter tone, but it's not long before Nemo's snapped up by some skin divers and taken away to a new home in a dentist's aquarium. This is where the real plot of the film begins.
The film is a journey film, and as such, it merely acts as a pretense for a wide variety of loosely related sketches. At times, the sequences seem like they could function on their own as stand-alone shorts. If you don't like a sequence, skip it on the DVD player -- you won't have missed much -- you can just assume that Marlin and Dory (his forgetful companion in the movie)have yet escaped another life-threatening and/or humorous random encounter and are now back on track, searching for Nemo.
Also, like many other Pixar films, there's a lot of satirization of the ordinary, work-a-day world around us. Nemo's aquarium home becomes a metaphor for densely-packed urban areas filled with cubical-dwellers. Also, a "Flock of Seagulls" serves as an amusing reminder of the idiocy of blind greed and mob mentality.
Still, the movie's a bit overlong with a few too many cliffhangers at the end. Just when it seemed the movie should have been wrapping up, there was ONE MORE crazy, death-defying action sequence tacked on to tie up a loose end that I didn't really care about. The Incredibles had a similar false-ending/new crisis ending, but that movie's "new crisis" was entertaining rather than mundane. By the near end of Nemo, I was simply thinking, "Let's get back to the reef!"
The animation was wonderful, but overall, the story seemed labored, disconnected, and imperfect. Dory provided some great laughs but also got on my nerves. There were parts I loved (seagulls, Sharks Anonymous, the Aquarium, turtles, Dory) but there were parts that either bored or annoyed me (the whale, the jellyfish, the net, the deep sea creature, and Dory). A mixed bag to be sure.