Finding Nemo

Rating:
Summary: I found Nemo - three times this summer!
Review: This movie is so inspiring and charming there is no resisting another look and another and another.

The voice overs are adorable. The characters are positively enchanting and the story is best of Disney; so universally appealing. How do they create so much emotional range with animation? There are tongue-in-cheek lines and hopeful joy in the roller coaster ride with aquatic characters that will remind you of your own family and friends. Owning the adventure of Nemo to find his dad and his dad to find Nemo is just too precious to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: good kids movie
Review: I really enjoyed this movie, i like all of pixars work; and this one just brings back those good old memorys of when i was a kid and watched kids movies. I felt warm and fuzzy again.

Also for what its worth the sharks in this are well represented, except they are predators really. I mean they look like sharks, the blue shark especially looks, incredibley real; its a little small but thats ok. I'm sure there are small blue sharks out there.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST SEE FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!!!
Review: This was one of the best movies our family has ever seen. It rates right up there with Ice Age and Monsters Inc. My husband and I took our three children ages 6, 4, and 2 1/2 to the theater and they all loved it. Our 2 year old sat still the entire time with his eyes glued to the screen. The movie was sad, funny, suspensful, and exciting throughout. You absolutely won't be disappointed in this one. We preordered a VHS for Christmas this year, and I expect the kids will watch it over and over again as soon as they open it. My husband and I can't wait to see it again as well! Finding Nemo is a 10 star movie, not just a five! Very adorable...you gotta see it!

Rating:
Summary: SWEET!!!!
Review: This movie was AWESOME! A great movie for kids and adults! It was hilarious, man!!!

Rating:
Summary: WONNNNDDDDDERRRR FULLLL SHOWWWWW
Review: (boy i wish I could speak whale)
It all starts with a Clownfish Father named Marlin talking to his wife, Coral, about the new house (anenome) they got. then, suddenly, a barracuda appears outside. it knocks marlin back into the anemone with it's tail, unconsious. When the screen starts again everything is dark, Marlin yells for his wife but all he finds is one egg. He names it nemo. and so a great show begins. I thought it was gonna be a stupid show but when marlin has a head on crash with a Achilles Tang named Dory its all laughing from there. Dory suffers from short term memory loss, and one time she forgot Marlin was following her ROFL!!! then at the end of the movie she speaks whale... HILARIOUS!!!! MUST SEE MOVIE!

Rating:
Summary: Walt Would Approve
Review: Recently, I saw Albert Brooks on Late Night with David Letterman, talking about Finding Nemo. Brooks, who stars as the voice of Marlon, the daddy fish, had taken his son (who, I believe was about five years old, the equivalent human age of Nemo), to the premiere. After about five minutes, Brooks said his son leaned over to him, and quietly said, the way a grownup might, "I cannot watch this movie," and walked out. Late in the movie, the son returned, having obviously been crying. Leaning over, Brooks assured his son, "You are not Nemo."

Such is the power of this fish story about father and son clownfish who become separated, and must struggle to find their way back to each other. Marlon is a loving but neurotic and overprotective father; Nemo is a frustrated young fish who wants to be independent and see the world, and resents his father for preventing him from doing so. We see an ocean (read: the world) that is a terrible, heartless, and yet joyous place that we frail fish must confront, as best we can, because there's no alternative.

The animation was done by the wonderful folks from Pixar, who are the closest thing to the reincarnation of Walt Disney. There is simply no comparison between the animation of the typical, visually flat, politically correct, contemporary animated movie (many of which are produced by Walt Disney Pictures!) and Nemo. In Nemo, the ocean floor looks like the ocean. And the characters are all ... characters. They are all physically distinctive, wonderfully written, and performed by gifted actors who - if you'll pardon the cliché - will alternately make you laugh and cry. Of particular note are Barry Humphries as Bruce the Shark, Geoffrey Rush as Nigel the Pelican, Willem Dafoe as Gill, Allison Janney as Peach, and of course, young Alexander Gould as Nemo. Ellen Degeneres, in particular, steals every scene she's in, as Dory, a gregarious fish whose memory leaks like a sieve. But this is Albert Brooks' movie. The Academy should give this man a special Oscar for the most moving voice work my wife and I have ever heard.

Thomas Newman, of the musical Newman clan (Alfred, Lionel, Randy) has produced a score that is subtle and unobtrusive much of the time, but at dramatic moments takes over, and is more impressive, with repeated viewings. He deserves his fifth Oscar nomination for Nemo.

Andrew Stanton's (Toy Story, Monsters, Inc.) screenplay, written with Bob Peterson and David Reynolds, brims with intelligence and wit (e.g., in an AA-style group of recovering - and frequently lapsing - sharks, the members intone, "I am a nice shark, not an eating machine.... Fish are friends, not food"), and Stanton's direction does not waste a scene. Every moment in Nemo will either charm you or move you. In fact, as my wife remarked, for all of its many comic scenes, this is one of the most moving movies you'll ever see. We've already seen it several times with our three-and-a-half-year-old son, who loves it, and yet with each new viewing, we notice things we'd previously missed.

Though I wish Nemo would win all of the big Oscars (Best Picture, Director, Screenplay), I doubt Academy voters will choose it over its live-action competition. And yet, I will be very surprised, if a better picture -- live action or animated -- is released this year. Finding Nemo is truly a find.

Originally published in The Critical Critic, October 17, 2003.

Rating:
Summary: FIVE STARS
Review: When I first saw finding Nemo with my friends on the release day, my life changed forever. There is so much in this movie that is so good. This is by far the best Pixar Anamation Studios movie, and they will only get better. Who says rated G movies are no fun?

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!
Review: (This review is for the cinema version)
I tell you what, everytime I go to a Pixar movie, I keep expecting Disney to have taken control of the creative genii at Pixar and turn out a load of junk. Each time, I'm wrong. Finding Nemo was incredibly fun, it was warm, and--amazingly--not patronizing. Usually kids movies talk down to kids and adults alike, trying to hamhandedly teach a lesson. Not so with Pixar movies. You should get this DVD. I know I will.

Rating:
Summary: If your kids love Finding Nemo...
Review: .. and you're looking for more, make sure you check out "Captain Jon Explores the Ocean"(also available from Amazon) a great way to continue the journey of a young marine biologist. The two together would make a great holiday gift! Also check out Blue Planet. I can't wait for the sequel to Finding Nemo!

Rating:
Summary: Fish are friends, not food
Review: How's that coming from sushi-lover like me? After this movie, maybe an ex-sushi lover. Well, actually, that's the slogan for an encounter group of predators who are trying to renounce their carnivorous ways. But the thing about Finding Nemo is that it portrays fish as the beneficent other in nature as opposed to humans, who are portrayed as invaders of the shimmering azure sea as well as the real predators of the ocean. Or in the case of Nemo, searchers for pets, especially for a piscicidal (fish killing) girl in braces where the shower scene music from Psycho is cued on her appearance.

The story: Marlin, an orange clownfish with white stripes, has been overly protective of Nemo, his only surviving offspring, who has an underdeveloped fin. When Nemo is kidnapped by a scuba diver, he enlists the help of Dory, a thin blue fish who is not only more cheerful, fun-loving, fancy-free, and goofy, she has a problem with short-term memory, which can be aggravating to Marlin, but funny for kids. The action cuts back and forth to their search for Nemo and Nemo's time in a fish tank in a dentist's office. There, he meets other fish, including a puff-fish, a funny blue female who thinks her reflection is her sister, and a scarred black fish who's the leader of the prisoners in the tank. They seem to find ways to distract them from their captivity, such as gathering around for a root canal and discussing the equipment used. They also talk to Nigel, a pelican with a thick Australian accent who flies in from the window. Now, the story: Marlin, an orange clownfish with white stripes, has been overly protective of Nemo... didn't I just say that?

Compared to Monsters Inc., which was a smash with its creative monsters and concepts, Finding Nemo doesn't quite match up to that triumph. There is an attempt to revive the Mike-James duo in M. Inc. with Marlin and Dory. The trouble is both are highly extraverted and their high-pitched babbling can be tiring, in contrast to the balance achieved with the more calm Jim weighed against the hyper Mike Wazowski. Which reminds me... compared to Monsters Inc., which was a... there I go again!

Yet the creativity shown in M. Inc. emerges. A herd of ocean turtles affecting a surfer's accent, DUDE! where the director also voices the lead turtle (I wonder if Fast Times' Jeff Spicoli was a turtle in his previous life). But the view of the blue ocean, the coral beds, and the swaying anemone that's Marlin and Nemo's home, is probably the prettiest sight of all, well-realized in Pixar's computer animation style.

Disney mines through movie history for roots, such as Jaws (Bruce the Shark), a scene lifted from The Birds, the theme from Psycho, and of course Jules Verne, whose Captain Nemo was an explorer, an adventurer in the same way our clownfish hero is. The difference is, Little Nemo learns from his experience. And yes, this'll probably get the little tykes more attuned to marine life in the same way that Bugs did with insects. But it also mines its own history. Nemo looks like an orange and white variation of The Little Mermaid's Flounder, while Nigel the Pelican is the street-wise, or ocean-wise character of knowledge like the seagull in Mermaid or The Rescuers.

Albert Brooks voices Marlin as an overprotective and loving father who means well, but is too haunted by the deaths of his mate and their other offspring to realize that Nemo needs adventure and experience, although nothing drastic, but Ellen DeGeneres steals the show in her vocalization as Dory, as does Geoffrey Rush as Nigel the Pelican. Oh, and Albert Brooks does Marlin as a...okay, time to fix the short-term memory.