Finding Nemo  
New Pixar Animation Finding Nemo Reviewed
Finding Nemo is the latest in a long line of box office hits from the animators at Pixar. Already smashing the record for the most successful opening weekend ever for an animated feature, it looks likely to beat The Matrix: reloaded as the most successful
film of the year in the US.

The film tells the moving and hilarious tale of a father son relationship between two clown fishes and their adventures as they fight to be reunited after Nemo, the son, is scooped from the ocean by a scuba diving dentist.

Imprisoned in a fish tank in a Sydney dental surgery Nemo makes new friends who give him hope that he will get back to the ocean and his father before he is handed over to the dentists fish murdering niece.

Meanwhile Nemo’s father is racing across the ocean along with Dory, a relentlessly jolly but dippy blue tang with a short-term memory problem. Along the way the pair find themselves accosted by sharks, deep sea angler fish and jellyfish and are helped on their way by sea turtles and a friendly pelican. Every one of these oceanic inhabitants are the most
charming and loveable characters and help to make this film a guaranteed classic.

It is a measure of the quality of Pixar’s storytelling that the digital animation serves only to enhance it. The film looks stunning; water, clouds of sand and ripples are perfectly rendered, shoaling fish with iridescent skins and the undersea plant life are utterly convincing.

But it is without doubt the characterisation and heart-warming story that propel the film along. Switching from a belly laugh to fear and sadness in the blink of an eye, ‘Finding Nemo’ pushes and pulls you like a tidal current through to its happy conclusion.

Neil McFarland
Contactmusic