FINDING NEMO is the latest Pixar offering to hit theaters.
The film starts out telling the story of Marlin and his clownfish wife, who have just bought their little piece of real estate on the Great Coral Reef of Australia. Marlin's wife and all of their eggs, with one exception, die in a shark attack, leaving Marlin a widower with a young egg to raise.
Flash forward to the first day of school. The egg turns out to be our hero Nemo, who has an underdeveloped "lucky fin" and an overprotective father. Marlin wants Nemo to stay home from school in the worst way due to his concerns over what the other little fish will say in the - ahem - school.
On an expedition with their science-oriented teacher, Nemo and his newfound school friends split off from the group and find a small ship. Marlin catches up to the group in the hope of persuading little Nemo not to have an adventure; the father and son get into an argument, and in the process, a deep-sea diving hobbyist captures Nemo.
The hobbyist turns out to be an endodontist with a huge salt-water fish tank and a group of fish that had never been out of the tank seemingly in their entire lives. Willem Dafoe plays a fish constantly hatching escape plots, and Nemo's initiation into the fraternity of the tank involves helping out on one of those escape plots.
Meanwhile, Marlin meets up with Dory, a bluefish with a severe memory problem (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), and the two adventurers find the endodontist's deep-sea goggles, with his address on it. They use this address in their attempt to find Nemo, and in the process, run into one harrowing adventure after another (including a narrow escape from a shark with a fish addiction, and his AA-wannabe brothers in recovery).
This is an extremely predictable plot. You know Nemo is going to get found - you just don't know how until the end of the movie.
And, I agree with BigJack - no adult in-jokes such as the ones which populated MONSTERS, INC. This might have increased its enjoyability for us grownups immensely. Yes, the animation is gorgeous - more realistic than the average Pixar flick, in fact. And Ellen DeGeneres is hilarious as Dory. But then, I've always enjoyed anything I've seen her do, and that's not enough to redeem FINDING NEMO.
Skip it unless you have an 8-year-old animation fan. All the near-death experiences all the fish go through are so harrowing I don't want to recommend this film for kids under that age. Someone older is less likely to enjoy the film.
PriceTool.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources,
so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
