I was lucky enough to win two tickets to a preview screening of Finding Nemo on Wednesday night and I've seen a few clips of the film on tele and it looks great, so armed with my seven year old I decided to go and see if it was possible for it to be even better than my favourite animation - the hilarious 'A Bugs Life'.

Finding Nemo is set in the Great Barrier Reef and starts off showing a happy clown fish couple with their 400 fish eggs. But then disaster strikes. While all the other fish in the reef run for cover as a huge dark fish comes into view, Coral (Marlin's wife) races into the open ocean to try and protect her babies. Marlin is knocked out in the ensuing panic and when he comes around Coral and all the eggs are gone, eaten by one of the not so cute fish in this film. But not all the eggs, as Marlin swims around grief stricken he spots a lone egg that's been spared. Here comes Nemo! Nemo is the cutest thing in the film. You know in these animations there's always one character that gives the 'ahhhhhh' reaction - Dot the little princess ant who couldn't fly in A Bugs Life, the little girl Boo in Monsters Inc., Nemo has the 'ahhhhh' factor. Marlin is overprotective of Nemo (well, wouldn't you be if you'd lost 399 babies?) and when the time comes for Nemo to start school, his dad is beside himself with worry. All the baby fish in the school climb aboard a stingray and head out on a school trip but Marlin can't stand the thought of Nemo going so far into the ocean so he follows him out and tells him school is too dangerous and he must come home. The trouble is Nemo's made friends at school and feels accepted despite his disability. What? Didn't I tell you? In true 21st century style, Nemo is disabled. One of his fins is tiny and under-developed and this is a major cause for concern for Marlin, he (wrongly) thinks that because of his small fin he can't look after himself or swim as well as his friends. Nemo is so embarrassed that he decides to prove himself and swims up to the top of the water to reach a boat, you're so happy for him when he makes it and starts swimming back down to his dad. This is when the second disaster happens. On his way back, Nemo is caught by a diver who happens to be a dentist with a big aquarium in his surgery. And this is where Nemo ends up. The rest of the film is taken up with Marlins frantic search for his son, the cowardly clown fish survives adventure after adventure on his mission to be true to his word and never let anything bad happen to Nemo.

What I love about Pixar is they pick up on the smallest of details and magnify them, with Finding Nemo you can tell the research people at Pixar have been working overtime. From sneaky references to classic films, including a funny scene where a lapsed vegetarian shark is chasing Marlin and Dory and as he's breaking through to their hiding place he calls 'heeeeeeere's Brucey' in Jack Nicholson style, to a baby octopus 'inking herself' when one of the other children scares her. The facial features on the fish are amazing, they can change expression in the same way a human would and again a huge pat on the back is given to Pixar for their editing capability. The film is so bright and cheerful, all the main characters are fantastic bright colours and you can imagine what it must be like to dive into the Great Barrier Reef and look for yourself. The dark bits are few and far between but even then the animators and writers have stayed as true to life as possible while injecting a bit of humour into it. At the beginning of the adventure Marlin and Dory find themselves swimming in the dark depths of the ocean where there's no light and everything's murky and they get chased by an evil looking piranha with rows of long pointed teeth. I've heard on documentaries about the terrible creatures that live in the very depths of the ocean and obviously Pixar have been watching the same sort of programmes.

The film has got to be one of the funniest films I've seen in a long time. I was literally rolling around in my seat at the cinema chuckling at a crazy one-liner from Marlin at one point. The cast doesn't include the major stars which Toy Story boasted, in fact the only one's I've heard of are Ellen Degeneres, Barry Humphries (who, despite the fact that I hate this man with a passion, had me laughing my head off as the vegetarian shark) and Willem Dafoe who voices a tropical fish called Gill who befriends Nemo in the aquarium. Nemo himself is voiced by a nine year old boy called Alexander Gould and it's just right to have a child doing the voice for this fish as it sounds so much better than hearing an adult trying to speak in a childs voice. There isn't really a soundtrack to speak of as most of the sound effects come as bubbly water mimicking the sounds beneath the ocean, but 'Under the Sea' is used to roll out the end credits - very apt.