Film #041 - Finding Nemo (2003)
Finding Nemo is the high water mark for Pixar as far as box office is concerned. Among recent animated films (post-The Lion King), only Shrek 2 has sold more tickets. And it certainly deserved all the acclaim it received, it’s an almost perfect film.
Really, a film about fish starring Albert Brooks. Just screams “blockbuster”, doesn’t it? But that’s the beauty of Pixar. They can often see the value of a film treatment when few others could see the potential. But director Andrew Stanton proved that his father/son story had the kind of broad appeal that few films can match.
First, it tells a great story with just enough character growth. Both father Marlin (Brooks) and his son Nemo (Alexander Gould) have to learn to change their perspectives on life in order to achieve their goals. Marlin must learn that caring about someone means trusting them (both by learning to trust dim fish Dori (Ellen Degeneres) and trusting his son to be able to live his own life). Nemo must learn to take responsibility for himself. Very basic themes, of course, but solid ones on which to build a foundation.
Next, the characters are perfectly balanced. From neurotic Marlin to excitable and naive Nemo, to Dori and her short attention span, the main characters can practically carry the film themselves. But they don’t have to. Even in the short scenes back at the reef, the parents and the kids at Nemo’s school are well defined characters, not just placeholders. The various fish (and others) that Marlin, Dori and Nemo are also well-defined, none of them seeming to be there just for a joke or two. They all fit together into an organic whole, logically and believably.
The performances are, for the most part, just as good. I had never been a big fan of Ellen Degeneres, but Dori made me realise that, perhaps, it was just her lousy material. Brooks I have always liked, but I had never seen him portray such a sympathetic character before. I could go on forever listing all the talented people in the cast, but of particular note are Willem Dafoe as Gill, the fish obsessed with escape and Geoffrey Rush as the pelican Nigel (I knew he was good when I failed to recognize his voice). In fact, the only character voice I didn’t like was Crush (director Andrew Stanton). I have a short tolerance for “surfer dudes” and he just starts to grate on me after awhile.
It goes without saying that the film looks beautiful. I wish I had seen it in the theater, because it looks so gorgeous on a good TV screen, I can only imagine what it looked like on the big screen. The fish move realistically (with adjustments for anthropomorphic needs) and the water looks so real that you’d think it was shot in the real ocean and the fish added later.
As I stated earlier, there are few films in any genre that can touch Finding Nemo. It’s funny, exciting, beautiful and touching all at once. It has moments of great pathos (the death of Nemo’s mother) and great joy. And it all works at a frenetic pace, barely pausing for breath during its one hundred minute runtime. And when it does pause, it doesn’t waste the time on useless exposition or fart jokes. It uses those breathers to focus in, meaning the audience never loses sight of the story and the characters.
You’ve heard the term “for the whole family”? Well, they don’t get much more “for the whole family” than this one.