May 30, 2003 | It’s fin-tastic! It’s must-sea entertainment! It’s a whale of a tale! It’s… It’s…
Sorry about that. I just couldn’t resist the possibilities for punning while trolling for superlatives appropriate for Finding Nemo, the latest computer-animated masterwork from the makers of Toy Story and Monsters Inc. Much like its illustrious predecessors, this new treat produced by Pixar Animation Studios (and released by Walt Disney Pictures) is magical enough to please children of all ages, yet also suf-fish-iently…. OK, I promise, I’ll stop. But it really is sufficiently sophisticated in its wit and style to please older audiences. Indeed, it’s capable of charming even surly teens who normally wouldn’t be caught dead at something so terminally uncool as a “cartoon movie.”
At heart, Finding Nemo is a classical adventure yarn about a father’s desperate search for an abducted offspring. In this case, the story begins in the Great Barrier Reef, with Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks), a persistently fretful clown fish, clinging protectively to Nemo (Alexander Gould), his only child. (Yes, you guessed it: In the tradition of most other Disney-released animated features, this is a movie about a single parent.) In the wake of his wife’s tragic demise, Marlin is acutely sensitive to the dangers of the deep. And his worst fears are realized when little Nemo dares to swim too close to the surface, only to be scooped up by a scuba diver.
While Nemo is carted off to a fish tank in a dentist’s office overlooking Sydney Harbor, Marlin sets out on eventful journey to recover his son. Along the way, the anxious father is joined by Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a sweetly optimistic blue tang whose chronic forgetfulness – she suffers from severe short-term memory loss, kinda-sorta like the hero of Memento – makes her, at best, an unreliable ally. Still, Dory comes in handy, almost in spite of herself, when she and Marlin swim afoul of Bruce (Barry Humphries), an image-conscious shark who occasionally backslides while trying to mend his predatory ways.
Meanwhile, back in Sydney, Nemo befriends such fellow fish-tank denizens as Peach (Allison Janney), a chipper starfish, and Bloat (Brad Garrett), a too-easily excitable blowfish. Gill (Willem Dafoe), a hard-bitten moorish idol, is the only other tank-mate who recalls life as an ocean-dweller. Naturally, he encourages Nemo to join him in an escape attempt. Just as naturally, their well-laid plans don’t proceed without unforeseen complications.
Finding Nemo is so visually wondrous that it would be well worth the price of admission even if other elements of the movie weren’t up to speed. But there’s much more than computer-generated imagery here to tickle your fancy. The vocal talents – especially Brooks as the seriocomically neurotic Marlin, and DeGeneres as the amusing yet occasionally poignant Dory – are nothing short of splendid. And the screenplay, which is movie-savvy enough to include two homages to Alfred Hitchcock, provides a tasty mix of thrilling adventure, heartfelt emotion and laugh-out-loud humor.
Praise be to multi-hyphenate Andrew Stanton, a veteran Pixar artisan who’s credited as director, co-screenwriter and vocal talent. (He provides the groovy-surfer voice of Crush, a blessed-out sea turtle who figures briefly in the plot.) To be fair, however, all of the animators under Stanton’s overview also deserve a hearty round of applause for their astonishing, eye-popping efforts.
