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Film Description
Wonderful Pixar film which became the first animated film to receive a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. On the way to his first day at school a little clown fish called Nemo is taken from the ocean by a scuba diver. He is placed in an aquarium in a dentist's office with lots of other fish. Marlin his over-protective father, sets out to find him. The simple plot concerning a clown fish's desperate search for his son features more wit here than in most adult-orientated comedies, whilst the groundbreaking animation is breathtaking.
This latest Disney/Pixar collaboration tells the tale of the quest undertaken by neurotic single father Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) to track down his only child, ... more >
This latest Disney/Pixar collaboration tells the tale of the quest undertaken by neurotic single father Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) to track down his only child, after the eponymous Nemo is abducted by a pair of strangers. Lest this sound too dark, I should point out that all the lead characters are fish, and that the bulk of the action takes place on, around or under water: Marlin is a clownfish who’s long stopped being funny, but the Great Barrier Reef setting allows for comic cameos from pelicans called Nigel and Gerald, and from a reformed shark called Bruce.
The joke set-pieces and computer-generated textures are, as you’d expect from the people who brought you Toy Story, as lovingly-crafted as ever, and the ambient sounds of the ocean soothing beyond belief. The script achieves the usual mix of thrills and gags about fish poo for the kids, while delivering a parable of modern parenting for their guardians. “I promised I’d never let anything happen to him,”
mourns Marlin at one point, causing his scatterbrained, memory-shot female companion Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) to have a rare moment of clarity: “That’s a funny thing to promise.”
So many films for and about children these days are about holding on (perhaps due to the prevailing moral climate, not to mention the control freakery of most film directors) – one might even argue Toy Story is about this very need – but here’s one which offers letting go as an alternative; its parenting paradigm is a turtle called Crush (his voice, tellingly, that of the film’s director Andrew Stanton) who’s only too happy to send his kids swimming away in order to let them grow, safe in the knowledge they will most likely paddle straight back to him.
This is a much funnier, warmer film than the company’s previous Monsters, Inc., with its cuddly corporate conveyor belts and arbeit macht frei moralising. But the return to the cute, colourful pastel seascapes of The Little Mermaid may be deceptive. Finding Nemo proves to have a real understanding of the real scary monsters – never mind your jellyfish and toothy sharks – haunting middle America at the moment: abandonment and loss. The result is a film that knows exactly what it means to be a small fish at the very bottom of a very big pond; a Robbie Williams cover version of “Beyond The Sea” aside, it also has the perfect ending.
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