Finding Nemo -- It's a Scream-o!

Vacations are wonderful things. They help you discover what you might never have bothered to give the first glance otherwise.

Finding Nemo was that one movie I wasn't going to see. I don't know why... maybe it was the hype, maybe it was my newfound obsession with older "mindblowers" like The Usual Suspects and Fight Club. Maybe I was just sick of cartoons, period. But... well, you know the rest of this story.

Finding Nemo is the exuberant "under the sea" tale of a father who doesn't want to let go, a son who wants to get out more, and the tragic day when the two are separated.

Marlin the clownfish (voiced by Albert Brooks) is moving to a new pad with his lady Coral (Elizabeth Perkins) and hundreds of tiny little eggs. Coral doesn't like living here by the dropoff, and her intuition is right. Sooner than later, a big shark (or barracuda, or something) comes out of the darkness, eats everything but Marlin and one of the eggs, and disappears.

Fast forward we go, to Nemo's first day of school. He's more than anxious to get out and experience the world, but Marlin? Nooo, Marlin's got some real problems with letting go, and rightfully so after what has happened. To the school they go, and it's not long before Nemo settles in with a more "daring" crowd. So daring, in fact, that Nemo, in the midst of an act of defiance, ends up getting captured by a diver and taken "home" to the aquarium of a dentist's office. Soon, he will become the birthday present of the scariest seven-year-old girl in braces you've ever seen.

Will the father and son ever be reunited? I wouldn't dream of spoiling it now.

If you've seen a Pixar movie, you know what you can expect here. The animation is crisp and smooth, and there are a few of those shots that one might think "No way in heck that's computer-generated." The atmosphere is not nearly as cheerful as that of Monsters Inc., most of the time it is blue, blue, and more blue. Swim the unfriendly oceans! But there are a few passes through rainbow-like groups of countless species of aquatic life a la The Little Mermaid, and run-ins with jellyfish, turtles (Duuuude), and an anglerfish. Plus, the scenes that take place in the aquarium give us a break from the deep blue nothingness by gracing us with a splash of typical aquarium decorations and some colorful characters.

The greatest strength of Finding Nemo is the comedy. It takes a little while to get into the real meat of it, but once you're there it's practically nonstop. For the majority of this, we can thank Ellen DeGeneres who does the voice of Dory, a purple fish that Marlin meets on his quest to save his son. She has a severe case of short-term memory loss (which they use to their advantage greatly). Dory acts like a cross between stammering Guy Pearce in Memento and the unpredictable Jim Carrey in (insert Carrey movie here). Except of course that she's female. So you might toss a dash of Whoopi Goldberg in there. I also thought the dentist's scenes with his patients were pretty funny, as well as the "whale speaking" (You're not speaking whale, you're speaking upset stomach!) and the "Mine!" seagulls. There are "plain old fun" scenes to be had as well, such as the dentist talking to a pelican that perches on his open window. No one needs to know why or how the two of them are talking, you just accept it. One of my favorite scenes came towards the end, when Marlin finds himself riding on the back of a friendly turtle called Crush (voiced by Andrew Stanton who also wrote and directed this thing). Reminded me a lot of Bastian riding the back of Falkor in The Never Ending Story.

Is Finding Nemo misanthropic? Maybe just a little bit. But even the diver/dentist acknowledges later to one of his patients that he thought the fish was in trouble and that he saved its life. If that's his intention, it's not exactly a foul portrayal. One of the sharks makes a brief stab at "Americans", which for the most part goes over well with us, especially considering that you find out later, the divers are from Sydney, Australia.

Will it scare the kids? That's hard to say. In a movie theater, it probably will -- there are several sudden loud noises accompanied by whatever made the noise popping up on the screen all huge, baring teeth and milliseconds away from biting down. I'm 27 and I jumped a few times. If a kid can handle school, they can probably handle this... but there were several in the theater with me that were three and four that did seem to get uncomfortable at times.

Didn't stop me.
There goes my favorite line from the movie. The great William DaFoe provides the voice of Gill, a large black & white angelfish with great texturing in his animation. Nemo gets stuck in a part of the aquarium, and asks for help because one of his fins is smaller than it's supposed to be. Gill swims by and says "Didn't stop me," showing his own tattered fin. It's a great little message.

Finding Meno obviously has a powerful effect on people, judging by the fact it's already in the top 200 on Imdb.com. I don't know if it's the "recency" effect or the serendipitous Father's Day timing, but it's hot. Whether it deserves that spot, ain't my call. I would guess that it is not so much an overabundance of high votes as it is a shortage of low votes, because there is nothing to dislike about this movie aside from small personal preferences. Things like the dark atmosphere of the deeper ocean, or the presumable guilt trip of "Fish are friends, not food!", maybe.

If you're a Disney fan, if there is even one Disney movie that has moved you in your life, you should do yourself a favor and check this one out. Never mind all the gobbledygook about Disney being overhyped. Nobody feels bad about falling into the uber hype trap that is sunshine. Nobody flinches when the weatherman says that we'll have a gorgeous day, lots of sunshine, as though it were a FACT that sunshine is the best kind of weather. So why feel embarrassed about being a Disney lover? Forget about human diversity, we're not as different as they want you to think. Let Finding Nemo set a box-office record. Doesn't mean that it was the best movie around, it just means that somebody connected with it. I know I did!