Finding Nemo (DVD)

...can be answered by watching Finding Nemo.

The Characters
Normally at this point I would describe the character performances, but everything besides the voices are provided courtesy of CGI, and very well crafted they are. To create the characters they have taken a variety of aquatic life forms and gave them somewhat human facial expressions e.g. Marlin who’s always worrying has actually got frown lines. It’s also ...
...on the similar lines to Finding Nemo, but I think has a better known cast.


Well I hope I haven’t given too much away, but since your probably only going to be showing it to your children any way you’ll need to know what it’s about.

To members- If you have found anything wrong with my opinion or feel there is anything missing that you would like to know, as usual leave your comments as they are ... more

Studios- Disney- PIXAR
Length- 1hr 36mins/ 92mins
Rating- U/Universal
Genre- Animated comedy

Voice cast
Albert Brooks- Marlin
Ellen DeGeneres- Dory
Alexander Gould- Nemo
Willem Dafoe- Gill
Brad Garret- Bloat
Allison Janney- Peach
Austin Pendleton- Gurgle
Stephen Root- Bubbles
Vicki Lewis- Deb/Flo
Joe Ranft- Jacques
Geoffrey Rush- Nigel
Andrew Stanton- Crush
Elizabeth Perkins- Coral
Nicholas Bird- Squirt
Bob Peterson- Mr. Ray
Barry Humphries- Bruce
Eric Bana- Anchor
Bruce Spence- Chum
Bill Hunter- Dentist
LuLu Ebeling- Darla
Jordan Ranft-Tad
Erica Beck- Pearl
Erik Per Sullivan- Sheldon
John Ratzenberger- Fish School

Plot/Story
Just imagine for a moment that under the sea, more specifically the Great Barrier Reef is like a suburb. A pair of clownfish, Marlin and Coral have just moved into an anemone and plan to raise their 400 children in a nice safe area, that I until a barracuda shows up and eats Coral and 399 of the eggs (which we don’t actually see and neither does Marlin as he was unconscious. My brother suggested that she took the eggs and went away, but he couldn’t give me a reason why so that just sounded stupid). When Marlin comes too he finds one egg which has a crack in it. Nemo as he calls him develops a deformed fin as a result of this crack, which he and his dad call his lucky fin. Add that to the fact he lost his wife and his other 399 children and you can tell that Marlin is a very over-protective parent. On Nemo’s first day at school (yeah clever pun fish going to school), Marlin is as over protective as ever. Nemo is really embarrassed by his dad behaviour, making out he is a baby, especially when he follows him and his class to the drop-off- where the reef ends and what’s left is the vastness of the open Pacific. Nemo finally has enough and rebels against his father and swims out into open water. When he tries to swim back though a pair of human divers show up and one of them takes Nemo away.
Nemo ends up in a Sydney dentist’s aquarium with a menagerie of other marine life forms, led by Gill, who also came from the sea and his frequent escape attempts have left their mark on him.
Meanwhile Marlin is on a frantic search to find his son. He ends up bumping into (literally) Dory a blue tang fish. She offers to help Marlin but he soon find there is something wrong with her. It turns out she has a rather frequent memory problem (putting into effect the saying that fish have a three second memory) so she is as much a hindrance to Marlin as she is of help to his cause.
On their search they encounter vegetarian sharks, deep-sea monster fish, a jellyfish swarm, surfer dude turtles and the insides of several creatures too. They have to hurry too because in a few days Darla, the dentist’s niece is coming and she has a nasty habit of shaking fish to death, and it seems Nemo is next on her list.
Will father and son ever see each other again, or will they meet a grizzly end, and will Dory even remember what’s happened? All these questions can be answered by watching Finding Nemo.

The Characters
Normally at this point I would describe the character performances, but everything besides the voices are provided courtesy of CGI, and very well crafted they are. To create the characters they have taken a variety of aquatic life forms and gave them somewhat human facial expressions e.g. Marlin who’s always worrying has actually got frown lines. It’s also good how they gave characters defects e.g. Nemo’s gimpy fin and Gill and the sharks’ scars. They also made all of the individual characters stand out against the everyday fish and the bad guys.

Marlin- His character is the over-protective parent, but he has the right to be after his wife and 399 of his children got eaten, and then his surviving son is born with a disability. What makes him funny is the contrast to Dory where he is swimming around in a panic while Dory is oblivious to their peril. It’s good to see his character evolve to be less scared by everything.

Nemo- In real life he would have probably died a long time ago with that deformed fin. In the film he is determined to show everyone that his disability won’t keep him down, especially his dad. This is shown by his determination to escape even as his dad is trying to rescue him. You do see a bit of the typical kid in him that adults have branded ‘Kevin and Perryness’, shouting and moaning at his dad in front of everyone, going off in a strop, but with a dad like Marlin who can blame him.

Dory- The most comical character I’ve seen in a Disney film since Mikey from Monsters Inc (who incidentally makes a very swift appearance in the credits at the end). What’s funny about her is that because of her memory problem she forgets what is danger most of the time e.g. with the sharks she just goes along with them while Marlin is sacred to death. I know we shouldn’t laugh at people with memory problems, but I just can’t help laughing at Dory. Ellen DeGeneres is funny, even her performance at the MTV movie awards was funny, pretending to be Tobey Maquire in a Spiderman suit.

The tank fish- Inside the tank the dentist’s fish tank, Nemo meets Gill, Bloat, Peach, Gurgle, Bubbles, Deb/Flo and Jacques. Occasionally they are joined by Nigel the pelican in their second favourite past-time (other than trying to escape) the dentist performing operations.
Gill I think is an angel fish. He is an angel fish I think and I think he is their unofficial leader as he is the only other fish who has come from the ocean and comes up with the escape plans. He desperately wants to get out of the tank as he has seen what tank life has done to his fellow ‘inmates’. Even though he appears sane, his escape attempts seem to point to him being as mad as the rest.
Bloat is a puffer fish, and puffer fish are renowned for their ability to inflate, and this particular trait comes into action when he gets agitated. You may recognise the voice (Brad Garret) as Dim the rhino beetle from A Bug’s Life
Gurgle, well I don’t know what kind of fish he is, except a neat freak. He always has to get his friend Jacques, the French shrimp to clean everything.
Deb has split personalities. She thinks the reflection on the walls of the tank is her sister Flo.
Bubbles doesn’t say much except bubbles. He is probably the maddest tank resident.
Last we have Peach the star fish. She is their look out as she is stuck to the side of the tank most of the time.
Nigel the pelican or Geoffrey Rush was also in another of Disney’s films last year, Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean. Lucy him landing roles in two of last year’s best films.

The vegetarian sharks- Three sharks seem to have started their own self help group, made up of Bruce, the great white, Anchor, no doubt named so because of the shape of his head- a hammer head shark, and Chum. Now they have all vowed never to eat fish again (which leaves me wondering what they actually would eat), but quitting is a hard job, especially when you refer to everyone as morsels. The idea for vegetarian sharks seems to have been stolen by Dreamworks upcoming film Shark Tale.

The turtles- No not the Mutant Ninja kind, but they must have the same voice coach. These green turtles spend their days riding the EAC (East Australian Current). Crush and Squirt seem to speak in a surfer dude/hippie tone saying words like ‘Dude’, ‘Righteous’ and ‘Whoa’ a lot. Apparently Crush’s voice was provided by the director.

Mr. Ray- He was a manta ray and was supposed to be a teacher. They used the idea that naturally little fish swim under the wings of these much larger creatures for protection. He sings a lot and I liked the one part where Nemo and his dad were fighting and he sounded like he was going to sing but didn’t- ‘Thhheeerrreee’s… nothing to see, gather, over there’ to the kids.

Fish school- The fish imitate things by changing their formation. They take a disliking to Marlin because they think he’s harassing Dory when they’re asking for directions. It provides one of the funniest moments I saw when Marlin was is facing forward and you slowly see them coming down behind him in the shape of a clownfish, moving the mouth to make it look like they are taking-off Marlin talking. Regular PIXAR viewers will probably recognise the voice, John Ratzenberger as Ham the piggy bank form Toy Story. Some of you older readers may also remember him as Cliff the mail-man from Cheers.

The seagulls- The seagulls are just what you’d expect, always in massive flocks, attacking other animals for food, and in the film they all continuously shout ‘MINE’.

Special effects;
Well as the film is one giant special effect, what can I say, the special effects are great. The realism of the scenery and the factual aspects of the little details such as how one drop of blood in the sea can set a shark into kill mode and how their eyes turn over to black and their teeth jut forward, and the fact deep sea predators use light to draw in their prey and hypnotise them. There is also the textures of the characters e.g. when the fish are out of water you can see water droplets dropping off them. Even though there is a lot of realistic detail there is also some surreal aspects to the characters, e.g. facial expressions, the way the characters use their appendages/flippers to put in action to scenes. I am amazed that they use this fine detail and improve on it every time because I would have thought children wouldn’t be bothered by fine detail.

Sound track;
The sound track by Thomas Newman, a Grammy winner and Oscar nominated composer, his credits include the Title Theme to the HBO series "Six Feet Under," "Road to Perdition" and "American Beauty.
It is classical and very soothing ocean music like something you’d probably hear from a tape recorder you play to help you get to sleep. It doesn’t really do that though. There is also the song at the end during the credits- A remake of Bobby Darlin's "Beyond The Sea", sung by Robbie Williams. The bad part is I heard the original during a gangster film a couple of weeks ago so that’s not really a nice thing to be thinking about when trying to watch it.

Why would you want to watch it?
To be honest unless you’re a child, have children or share a house with children then you are probably not going to get to see it or even want to see it. If you have no shame though and always watch kid’s movies no matter how old you are then you won’t be doing a bad job picking this film to watch.
If you or your kids loved PIXAR’s other work, TOY STORY 1+2, A BUG’S LIFE and MONSTERS Inc, they your sure to love this too.
It is meant to be for children yes but then again so was Shrek, and everybody I know thought it was great. If you have children under the age of about 5 years, then it is stated on the video that parents should watch it with young children because it contains ‘mild peril’ and some of the monster like fish might frighten them. If you were looking for an excuse to watch it yourself I’d say that’s a pretty good one.
If there was one character that I thought you should watch it just to see it, it would probably be Ellen Degeneres- Dory, she has most of the major funny moments in the film.
The other reason to watch it is simply to show your appreciation for the effort the cast, the animators and everyone else who worked on the film put into it to make it so good in the first place. If you want proof of it’s brilliance it was acknowledged with one of the highest honours a film can receive, an Oscar (for best animated film of course).
If you do want to let your children watch want to watch it yourself then chances are it will be on one of the Sky Movie channels or indeed the Disney channel within a few months. Of course if like me you’re not lucky enough to own Sky Digital, well it’s worth renting or even buying. My mother bought the video for my sister for £9 form ASDA. I expect the DVD should be under £15.
What was good about the video was that it also had a bonus feature of an animated short called ‘Knick-Knack’, one of PIXAR’s earlier works, made 6 years before TOY STORY.
It was a story about a bunch of souvenirs that are alive like the TOY STORY toys. One is a snowman stuck in a snow shaker. It’s about his efforts to try and get out of his glass world and have fun with all the other ‘Knick-Knacks’. It probably doesn’t sound too great, but I was amazed about how well it was made, after all it was 1989. It isn’t near the standards of the feature film, but it is still good how they managed to produce it to such a standard at that time.
There is however one disadvantage with letting your children watching this film, well actual it’s nothing to do with the film itself, it’s more to do with afterwards. In America there was a rush to buy Clownfish and other exotic fish as the kids wanted their own Nemo and other characters. As if that wasn’t bad enough some of the kids then decided to ‘help Nemo get home’ by flushing their fish down the toilet, something the fish tried to do in the film. That probably happened to even more fish when people were ill-equipped to keep the fish too and children would have probably got bored when they realised they don’t do very much more than swim around leaving the adults to look after them. Something similar happened when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released and everybody started buying pet turtles and letting them go down the sewers. I know America has looser animal restrictions, but it’s not going to stop kids wanting one. If your kids really want to re-enact the film there is also a video game, so maybe they may settle for that.

For more info on the film visit the websites:-

www.findingnemo.com
This tells you about the DVD and is for the younger web users.

PIXAR also have a site which is more about the technical stuff;
www.pixar.com/featurefilms/nemo
This also tells you about the new PIXAR film called The Incredibles which is about a retired, out of shape superhero who has return to crime fighting. A short trailer for this is also on the video.

My opinion;
As the film was meant for children, then my opinion will obvious be different from a child’s. It’s not really meant to be for my age group but neither was Shrek or Shrek2 and I thought that was great, and so did a lot of people my age. I admit when I originally heard about the film I thought it was a little babyish and no one my age would have gone and seen it. The only reason I did see it was because my sister bought the video and it was something different to watch. I doubt I would have watched the film really if she had not bought the video unless it was on TV. This has nothing to do with the quality of the film, just because it’s still a child’s film.
For me it was also a nice change to be laughing at something that didn’t involve a lot of swearing or sexual innuendo, and believe me I did laugh. I surprised me that story and the comedy could relate to somebody my age. I don’t know maybe I just have a juvenile sense of humour and I’ll laugh at anything. As I said before I was amazed about how greatly crafted the film was too, and that they managed to make a film about fish actually interesting.
I don’t know what more I can say to promote the film except watch it if you still don’t believe it, or read more opinions. I’m sure at least some of the other people who did review it liked it too.
Ok., no matter how perfect the film may sound, there are always ways it can be improved, but those are only minor discrepancies that I saw and that a child is not really going to be bothered about, and that didn’t stop it being a success, after all it did win an Oscar (best animated film) and being nominated for two others. If that’s not proof of a good film I don’t know what is.
PIXAR has continued to impress me with its work since Toy Story, that it can have a great and amusing storyline and be well crafted too.
PIXAR do have rivals though, in the form of Dreamworks. If the Incredibles is released this year which I think it most likely will be, then it may be out-done by Shrek 2 and Dreamworks other creation- Shark Tale which is much on the similar lines to Finding Nemo, but I think has a better known cast.

Well I hope I haven’t given too much away, but since your probably only going to be showing it to your children any way you’ll need to know what it’s about.

To members- If you have found anything wrong with my opinion or feel there is anything missing that you would like to know, as usual leave your comments as they are always appreciated. 

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