2003 / 101 Minutes / G
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

You know what I love about seeing kids’ movies in the theater? No, it isn’t the sweet little dickens that kicks the back of your seat for roughly an hour and a half. No, it’s watching the little goofballs react to what they’re seeing on the screen. Like, for example, at the beginning of this film when Marlin (the main character, a clownfish with the voice of Albert Brooks) loses his entire family except one son to a vicious barracuda. Right after that, the cute little girl in front of me turned to her mother and asked, sweetly, “What happened to all the other fishies?” Call me a sadist, but it brings a deranged smile to my cynical face.

“Finding Nemo” is the sort of kids’ film that even two adults with no children whatsoever can attend and have a great time, and not just because you get to witness the beginnings of such scarring psychological trauma. Oh no, there are all sorts of other benefits to be had. “Finding Nemo” creates a world of color and comedy and, yes, even danger. The threat of nature in all its brutality hangs over the entire film, established by this grisly beginning. You get more of a sense of danger in this innocent little film than you do at any point during “The Matrix Reloaded”. And that heightens everything that comes after, even the comedic moments have an edge to them because you know the stakes being presented. And this film is full of comedic moments. It’s a gorgeous little movie that taps more deeply into Brooks’ comic potential than the flaccid, live-action “The In-Laws” ever does. Ellen DeGeneres is also often hilarious as a scatter-brained fish with less of a short-term memory than the protagonist of “Memento”.

The story is fairly straightforward. Due to the afore-mentioned incident, Marlin becomes increasingly more protective of his last remaining family member, the titular Nemo. On Nemo’s first day of school, he takes place in a dare that results in his being captured by a scuba-diving dentist and taken to an aquarium in a Sydney dentist office. As a result of this, Marlin must search the entire ocean for his only son. In the process, he meets the scatterbrained fish described above as well as a group of twelve-step sharks, a pelican with the voice of Geoffrey Rush, a whale and others. It’s a lively adventure that zips along and even nestles in a nice message for not only children but adults as well. The message is even worked in without the sort of sermonizing one usually finds in such movies.

“Finding Nemo” is a triumph of color and fancy. It has many impressive set pieces (one involves a submarine and some underwater mines, both left over from World War Two) and a lot of big laughs. It is a densely populated and imaginatively realized world that brought a nearly constant smile to my face. Its only fault, as far as I can see, is that it seems a bit long at nearly two hours. Near the end, my attention was beginning to wane as climax after climax was piled on top of one another. But that is but a minor quibble. Pixar has done it again, with Andrew Stanton creating a world that immerses the viewer throughout and gives a great platform for colorful visuals, morals, well-developed characters and astounding flights of fancy. It also provides nearly as much entertainment for little kids and big kids as the “Toy Story” films, and more than 2001’s flawed “Monsters, Inc.”

Go already, you’ll have a good time. Really, that’s about all I have to say. But, hey, it’s enough. Other than “X2″, this is the best that the summer has to offer…so far.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2003 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.