Fish perfection - Finding Nemo

In a sea of movies for the kids, none have ever been better than those created by Pixar. Pixar has always been able to combine many different elements that appeal to the children as well as adults - minus all the sex, drugs, extra-terrestrial violence, and of course bad language. Pixar breaks their own track record with each release, and Finding Nemo is the next record set (both in production and box office revenue - which was over $70.5 million on opening weekend).

Pixar's Short
As a Pixar tradition, before the movie was another animation short to get the people loosened up a little bit and laughing before the movie even starts, and this one I think has been the best by far. The short has to do with a snowman inside one of those water balls where when you shake it up, little confetti like crystals will cloud up. The snowman is being tempted by another toy doll that's free on a little beach toy, and so he keeps trying different methods of mayhem to get out of his imprisonment. That's about all I'm going to say about the short, except that I'm sure most people will enjoy it. It did a great job at loosening me up for the main feature, at least.

Movie Synopsis
Finding Nemo begins with two clownfish looking over their new home in an Anemone, and then talking about their 500 eggs and how they're going to be parents any day now. All within the 10 minutes of the movie though, Marlin's wife and all of his children die in a gruesome death by a hungry Barracuda (damn, I hate those things, they ruin everything) - all but one. After a bit of a search for his wife, Marlin spots the lone egg, and vows to never let anything happen to him from this day on. His new son - Nemo.

Some time has passed now, and Marlin is the typical widowed father, with his disabled son, Nemo (Alexander Gould). Nemo's only deformation is that of his right fin, which was caused by the attack when he was a wee lil' thing inside his egg. It's the first day of school, and Nemo's all excited. Marlin on the other hand, politley tells him that if NEMO wants to, he can wait another year or two or ten. This being said to a child who can't wait to go to school, and his father acts like his son doesn't know what he wants. Well Nemo knows what he wants, but does that get him into trouble?

While visiting "the drop-off" (where the end of the coral meets the big blue ocean), Marlin embarrasses Nemo for the last time, which then ends with the dreadful - "I hate you." The worst thing for any parent to hear, especially when they're trying so hard to keep them safe. In a reflex retaliation by Nemo when his father tells the teacher (a tubular cool manta ray) that Nemo can't swim and shouldn't be that close to the drop-off, Nemo swims up to a boat that was on the surface, just to spite his dads orders. As Nemo starts to swim back down though, he's caught by a scuba diver. He's then taken to a dentist office and is put inside an aquarium.

Uh oh, Marlin is devastated. So for the rest of the movie, with the aid of Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a young Alzheimer recipient, Marlin braves the deep blue ocean in search of Nemo. Nemo's time in the aquarium (where he meets some new friends) and Marlin's search for Nemo kind of criss-cross throughout the movie, and so you're not just watching Marlin search 90% of the time and Nemo in the tank for the other 10%. That was a problem in The Hot Chick with Rob Schneider, it showed Rob Schneider the whole time as the girl, and only 5% of the movie showed what Rob's character was doing inside the girls body.

Without drowning Finding Nemo in darkness and loss, there is plenty of comedic value throughout the whole movie, and NO the trailers do NOT show every single thing that was funny in the movie. From Dory's constant forgetfulness and the spark between her and Marlin (such a weird name for a clownfish, don't you think?), to Nemo's time in the aquarium, Pixar found a way to balance out the movie in "serious" and comedic intervals.

While Monster's Inc. and Ice Age ALMOST brought me to a tear, Finding Nemo definitely pushed the tear out of my eyes. Only in the beginning of the movie though, but there were lots of times where I'd hear some girls a couple seats or rows down going "Aww" or "that's so sad".

Pixar Animation - Man what a treat
The animation in Finding Nemo is very well done, and because the movie took place in the ocean, the barrel of opportunities for what they could do was endless. The fast and furious "chase" scenes as you could call it had great animation to it, and not once did I feel like I had wasted money on poorly done animation. Picture quality was wonderful, and is Pixar's best to date. Compared to their past work, Finding Nemo had much more "action" sequences where there was a lot of high speed swimming and movement going on, and so the animation there alone had already passed Toy Story, Monster's Inc. (though Sully's fur was really good), and Ice Age (the fur on Manny).

Overall
Finding Nemo is a great movie to help jumpstart the summer movies, and although completely different than The Italian Job on so many levels, is wildly the same in terms of how much I enjoyed the film. Plus, the people I was with at the theater when I saw the movie where awesome, so it couldn't have gotten any better than that. Great friends, B-E-A-utiful girl, and great movie - that's what a summer movie should be about. Great for the whole family, and I recommend both to kids and adults the exact same, no adult should miss this film due to them being to "mature", when in reality they're actually being pretty immature.

happy viewing