Finding Nemo [26]

This movie is aimed directly at the kid-plus-parent movie going audience. Kids under 5 may have a tough time in the movie theater as the colors are vivid and stimulating and the sound can be overwhelming.

Finding Nemo focuses on the father-son relationship between Marlin (a clownfish, voiced by Albert Brooks) and his only remaining son, Nemo (Alexander Gould). A family tragedy has left Marlin very fearful and over-protective of Nemo. When a deep-sea diver captures Nemo on his first day of school, Marlin goes on a quest to recover him. Marlin encounters Dory (A blue tang, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) who has short-term memory problems, but a positive outlook on life. This provides the mismatched duo which takes us through the movie. You might call this a Wonza movie. (Wonza neurotic clownfish that can't tell jokes, Wonza absent-minded bubbly blue tang. Hilarity ensues!)

One great scene, which demonstrates Marlin and Dory’s personality differences, is when a whale has swallowed them. They are hanging on to the whale’s rough and craggy tongue. The whale wants them to let go, perhaps so he can either swallow them or spit them out. The scene turns so that the tongue is vertical, and now you know that the whale is swimming upwards. The water is receding inside the whale’s stomach.

Marlin: “The water's going down. It's half-empty!!!”
Dory: “Hmm... I'd say it's half-full.”
Marlin: “Stop that!”

I would not be spoiling anything by saying that they end up getting out of the whale. You already know the story of biblical story of Jonah and you have probably seen Pinocchio. If you see main characters in the “belly of the beast”, it means that things are looking up from now on. Since the title of the movie is Finding Nemo, you know that they will be doing just that.

There are several not-so-kid-friendly scenes, which you will end up spending the whole afternoon trying to explain to your young children:

• An angry barracuda kills the wife and children of Marlin the Clownfish. Leaving only a crippled Nemo baby. (Mother is dead as in opening scene like The Fox and The Hound. Also, like in Bambi: dead mother, but father takes over)
• 12-step shark Bruce gets a whiff of blood and angrily chases after Dory and Marlin including a “Here’s Brucie” re-enactment of the famous scene from The Shining.
• Vicious deep-water anglerfish with gigantic teeth chases Marlin and Dory in the dark.
• World War II mines blow up in a chain reaction around a submarine.
• Marlin and Dory are swimming through poisonous jellyfish.

Each one of these scenes has a comic relief scene following. Probably my favorite comes when they encounter a 150 year old sea turtle named Crush, voiced like a 70’s southern California teenage surfer by Andrew Stanton:

Crush: "Oh, I saw the whole thing, dude! First, you were like, whoa! And then we were like, WHOA! And then you were like, whoa."

There are plenty of in-jokes for grownups, especially fish-collecting dentists. My own dentist has always had a salt-water aquarium. Now she has made a point of having a clownfish and blue tang.

My favorite scene is when Nemo is inducted into the brotherhood of tankhood in a fraternal ceremony at the top of Mt. Wannahockaloogie. "Ah hoo wah hee. Ah hoo wah hee. Ah hoo wah hee " The fishes' facial expressions were killing me.

This is a must for your Disney DVD collection. All of the voices are great. This is a great movie for grownups; very young children will need some explanations. {BB}

Here is a helpful web site explaining the Finding Nemo fish species: http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/gpryor/naming.nemo.html

You can also have your own computer salt-water aquarium with this excellent screen saver by Serene Screen.
http://www.serenescreen.com

Added: October 8th 2004
Reviewer: BB
29 Point Scale Score:    [26]

Related Link (IMDB): IMDB
Hits: 3886
Language: english