Fish ARE food...not friends...

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2003)

I've just finished a nice snack of eel sushi, and a dinner featuring a very nice ahi tuna steak, so I'm now well prepared to begin my review of Pixar's latest creation: `Finding Nemo.' I highly recommend a nice seafood dinner before, or perhaps even after watching this film.
Nemo (Alexander Gould) is a clown fish, and the only survivor of a brood of hundreds. While still an embryo, a mean old fish eating barracuda (are there any other kind?) decides that a nice clown fish caviar is the order of the day, and snorks down all of Nemo's brothers & sisters, not to mention his mother Coral. Nemo's only surviving relative is his father Marlin (Albert Brooks), who, needless to say, is a bit distraught after having lost most of his family in a couple of bites.
Naturally, Marlin becomes a bit overprotective of his last remaining child, and poor Nemo feels a bit put-upon. In a moment of childish rebellion, Nemo swims out to the open ocean to where a boat is anchored. Sadly, the occupants of the boat, who just happened to be scuba diving, decide Nemo would make a great addition to their saltwater aquarium (in a dentist's office, no less). So Nemo is snatched away, and forced to live a life behind glass in Sydney, Australia.
Marlin, with the help of Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), the short-term memory-challenged blue tang, seeks to track down little Nemo, and hopefully bring him back to his rightful home amongst the sea anemone.
This is Pixar's fifth feature creation, and one of their most visually interesting. Sadly, one can't say the same for the story line, for it's about as original and captivating as a dinner at McDonald's. Marlin, father of the lost Nemo, is a bit paranoid. It's funny for the first few milliseconds, then becomes just annoying as the paranoia continues unabated until nearly the very end. And Dory's early onset of Alzheimer's isn't funny at all, no matter what. I think the Pixar people meant this stuff to be funny, but I've seen funnier bits in any given 10 minutes of `Sponge Bob Square Pants' than in this entire film.
The best part of the movie is Nemo's adventures in his new saltwater aquarium home in the dentist's office. The cast of fish characters he encounters there, and their fascination with dentistry, is one of the truly enjoyable parts of the show.
Yet what little sparks of joy one encounters is leveraged with some rather negative and strange characterizations that make you wonder if there was some sort of secret agenda at work amongst the animators. As usual with modern-day children's films based in the animal kingdom, carnivores are shown to be mean, cruel, heartless villains. And if one encounters a `nice' carnivore, it's only because they've sworn off eating flesh. There is a cute scene where we encounter three sharks that are members of `Fish Eaters Anonymous,' but we quickly discover that the sharks are having as hard a time being vegetarians as we do thinking that such a thing is even likely.

As for the highly praised CGI visuals, well, the Pixar folks have really outdone themselves. However, as CGI starts looking more and more `real' -one can no longer compare it to animation, but to actual photography. They have succeeded in entering a strange new paradox where CGI must now be compared to acutal underwater films, and in that regard, the visuals in `Finding Nemo' are not that impressive, as compared to a standard-issue Greet Barrier Reef documentary on the Discovery Channel. It's really good animation, but not nearly so good as the real McCoy.
In all the other Pixar films, where there are humans, they are usually shown in a positive light, like Andy from `Toy Story' and Boo from `Monster's Inc.' If there's a human villain, he's usually countered by a human who is kind, like the Andy/Sid dualism of `Toy Story.' But in `Finding Nemo,' we mainly see humans as either captors of poor, harmless fish or as catchers of poor, harmless fish. Casting aquarium hobbyists as villains is troubling, especially for a person like myself who has always enjoyed public and private aquariums, and has learned a great deal about our aquatic friends from such displays. It does not help showing fisherman as depriving fish of their civil rights, as though tuna and cod really are sentient beings. Is the catching, eating and displaying of fish truly a dark, sinister activity that we should avoid? It seems as if that is one of the messages of this particular film, one this reviewer does like at all.
However, I do agree that humans are certainly the greatest enemy to the oceans and to sea life, but it isn't aquarium hobbyists and fisherman who are the greatest threat, but corporate fishing fleets and industrial polluters. But the film has nothing to say or show concerning these two very real problems. Instead, humans in general are shown to be a vegetarian fish's greatest antagonist.
Aside from the `fish are friends, not food' message of the film, there is another, more important and more forthright theme, and that is a father's unconditional love for his son, even though the son deliberately rebelled against his father's overbearing protection. There is also a neat message about overcoming one's fears by plowing right into that which you fear, which sometimes is the best way to handle certain neuroses. But overall, the main messages of the film were diluted by the negative characterizations of humans and carnivores. Any film that causes you to feel guilt and shame for having enjoyed aquariums and seafood does deserve high marks.
Well, at least there was a sushi restaurant in "Monster's Inc.," so perhaps there's some hope for the Pixar folks after all. As for this film, wonderful CGI visuals, mediocre story. Yes, it has heart, but not nearly enough.
My Rating: 4/10