Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for a star. -- Fred Allen
In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing. -- Will Rogers
INTRODUCTION
There are 3.7 trillion fish in the ocean, they’re looking for one. Fish are just like people, only flakier. You’ve never seen fish prepared like this!.. And Sea it; . All the taglines they have for this movie are nicely done. Forget all about the two quotes I have mentioned above. Those are funny ones (well, supposed to be). This movie is another feather in the cap of Pixar Studios, stalwarts of animation. After the dramatic successes of Toy Story, Toy Story II, Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc Pixar and Disney have done it again. I had my skepticism when I first watched Toy Story, 15 minutes into it, I had already become a huge fan of Pixar Animations. Naturally it was meant for me to see this movie, I was also encouraged by the fact that this movie replaced “Bruce Almighty” (See my review on it, if time permits), as the chartbuster and has gained some $144, 043, 789 in 9 days in US.
This movie is for everyone (Mind you, all Pixar movies have entertainment for the entire family) and has some good fun all along. Like all the movies, it has something positive to say. It may not be up to the caliber of TS I & II but is definitely better than the “Bug’s Life”. All these movies are excellent ones to watch. Having said that, the developers of RenderMan (Ed Catmull, Loren Carpenter, and Rob Cook) were honored with an oscar for their exemplary work. This movie takes a quantum leap in Image Rendering, Ray-Tracing (oops, sorry for delving into CGI fundas) techniques with the latest and greatest. This is a movie with heart wrenching drama in a fishy(!) fashion. At the end of the movie, you will have this goodness feeling in you. Pixar Animation Studios have done everything in their hand to satisfy their distribution partners Disney with a box-office charm. Let us delve into the details, shall we?
TECHNICALITIES
VOICES
Albert Brooks ====> Marlin (voice)
Ellen DeGeneres ====> Dory (voice)
Alexander Gould ====> Nemo (voice)
Willem Dafoe ====> Gill (voice)
Directed by
Andrew Stanton
Co-director Lee Unkrich
Writing
Andrew Stanton , Bob Peterson & David Reynolds
Music
Thomas Newman
PLOT AND ANALYSIS
What do you expect an animation film to begin with? Finding Nemo starts on a simple note about a happily married clown-fish couple Marlin (wonderfully dubbed by Albert Brooks) and Coral who live near the Great Barrier Reef in th southern hemisphere. They settle into their new home on the Great Barrier Reef. Due to a mishap, all but one egg plus Coral is lost. Marlin takes a vow to protect the only egg left out as much as he could. This egg becomes Nemo (Named after HG Wells “20, 000 leagues under sea Hero/Villain). Nemo is about to go to school and this fact gives some consternation (like all parents), as Nemo has a diminutive fin, and can’t swim as eloquently as the others. Naturally, Marlin is an overprotective father, given Nemo’s situation. He doesn’t let Nemo do many things as he feels Nemo is disabled. This leads to rebelliousness in Nemo and he accepts challenges by him school fishes (!) and gets caught by a dentist (Aussie Mate!)Diving near the corals.
You now know what will be the rest of the movie right? It is the pursuit of Marlin to find Nemo with the help of Dory (Beautifully voiced by Ellen Degeneres) and a few sharks who follow a twelve-step program and a Pelican. Nemo makes some friends in the dentist’s aquarium and learns about life and bravery. How to live life peacefully, even with a disability? The movie is certainly about familial emotions and coming of age of a son, which sends a message to the kiddies watching the movie in a nice, fun way. The storyline re-uses many of the dramatic themes from earlier movies but it still enthralls the younger audience watching this movie. This movie is a must watch for family-folks. If you are of a younger generation, you can watch it for an entertaining time, if you wish.
TECHNICALITY ANALYSIS
All in all, this movie is certainly a visual splendor. Pixar is certainly improvising with each movie. There are some sequences that are as good as live cinematography and are just out of the world. This ingenuity is pretty much visible throughout the movie. There are so many 3-dimensional scenes that are just tremendous and the adventures of Marlin and Nemo is so enthralling. It just overtakes certain action movies. I guess the animators were at their free will to do whatever they wanted to do. For their size and fame, Pixar should have done much marvelous job than the work done by a relatively unknown firm from NZ on “Gollum” of the LOTR trilogy.
There are many references and tricks utilized by the director that makes it interesting for older audiences too, such as references to “Psycho”, Bruce the shark(Jaws fame, remember!), and the scene were he splinters through, “Here’s Brucey”, makes you think about “The Shining” beautifully enacted by Jack Nicholson. All things considered, this movie is a visual splendor and nothing less. Surprisingly, most of the successful movies in the past that had an excellent story-line were all animated ones. This is no exception.
“Finding Nemo” is an excellent one to be watched with the family. The Background music is also great. As for as voice acting goes, William Dafoe as Gill and Geoffrey Rush as Nigel have done some excellent jobs. Disney has done an excellent job in providing the classic “Disney Entertaiment” .
SOME SNIPPETS
Sheldon The fish : I’m H2O intolerant. & sneezes
Bruce the Shark: I’m having fish tonight!! :-)
Marlin: Okay, a mollusk walks up to this sea cucumber, well he doesn’t actually walk, he’s just there, and he turns to the sea cucumber, and... Well, wait, there’s a mollusk and a sea cucumber and...
Chum: You know for a clown fish, he’s not that funny. Marlin: ...and the sea cucumber turns to the mollusk and says, ’’With fronds like these, who needs anemones?’’
BOTTOM LINE
This is a treat to watch. Do not miss it for any reason. If you loved Toy Story, Shrek, Mosnsters Inc, A Bug’s life and “The Beauty and the Beast”, do not miss it for any reason, because you have almost all the stuff you get from those movies; All in this entire movie is excellent.
I hope you liked my review, Please chip in your comments
Kalil