The Reel Critic

Author: Matthew Clark

"Finding Nemo" is one of those animated movies you don't have to be a kid to enjoy. Watch it with your little brother, your college buddies or your folks, and I guarantee a good time. It's an animated epic. Through pink jelly tentacles, riding on a turtle's back on the EAC (East Atlantic Current) and even trapped in the belly of a whale, though aided by a little, blue amnesic fish named Dory, Marlin searches the vast blue for his only remaining child, Nemo. For me, "Finding Nemo" has the same effect as "Singing in the Rain" - I can't help feeling great after I'm through watching it.

I was only a little bit disappointed with "Nemo" when I felt like Pixar was trying to give a lesson in parenting. Marlin is the overly involved father who is so concerned for his child's welfare that he won't let the kid try anything on his own. "Nemo's not a good swimmer, he's got a bad fin." "You can't do it Nemo!" says his father, followed by a curt "Nemo, come back here!" At one point in his search he laments to Dory that he promised Nemo he'd never let anything happen to him. Dory wisely replies, "But you have to, or else nothing would ever happen." And of course in the end, Marlin does trust Nemo and has become a model clown fish father.

"Nemo" does have enough humor and animated spectacles, however, to keep me interested and entertained through these slower "moral moments." Dory and Bruce meet three "nice" sharks and sit in on their "fish are friends" AA-type meeting where they introduce themselves and confess the last time they ate fish. Seagulls are brilliantly portrayed squawking in Australian accents, "Mine. Mine. Mine." And two "lobstahs" from Boston chime into the film with, "It's wicked daahk down here." The inhabitants of the dentist's fish tank, where Nemo is taken, observe the operations like Jerry and Kramer without the junior mints (a reference to an episode of "Seinfeld" where Kramer drops a junior mint into a patient being operated on in the emergency room), muscling for a better view. The list of sound bites could go on and on.

I remember reading a high-brow review of "Nemo" this summer when it first came to theaters. The reviewer slammed the movie, talking about how no matter how good the animation or the jokes, the characters were just fish. The fish didn't bother me at all. It was a bit fishy, but Pixar, the animation studio where the movie was produced, makes the faces of sharks, turtles and pelicans come alive. No matter what form the characters take, they are still characters carrying human emotions and feelings. Do you have to look human to be internally complex, to be interesting? I was attached to everyone, even Dory, who provokes a similar feeling of annoyance, though not quite as intense as the annoyance felt by watching Jar-jar Binks, the character in the latest versions of Star Wars with the webbed feet and floppy ears, who is also terribley uncoordinated, flopping, stuttering and cracking bad jokes throughout the whole movie.

Just relax, get over the fishiness, pop some Kettle Corn and have fun watching the movie. "Nemo" is not a film of deep philosophical insights, it is a movie to simply enjoy. And I figure that's why we watch movies anyway - for enjoyment. Sometimes profundity is important, yet sometimes it's unnecessary. I didn't need it from "Nemo." Like art, not all critics agree on quality, but what's important is the feeling that the piece provokes.