Finding Nemo

John: "I went to see Finding Nemo yesterday."

Me: "Did you find him?"

"Yes." pause "See, it would have been funnier if you'd asked me something like, 'How did you find it?'"

"Okay."

That exchange from a couple weeks ago notwithstanding, yesterday Debbi and I went to see Finding Nemo, the latest Pixar animated film. A few critics have said it's Pixar's best yet, while my friend John thinks it's their worst yet (or maybe he liked A Bug's Life less; I wasn't entirely clear on that). I'm somewhere in the middle: I liked it's better than A Bug's Life or Monsters, Inc., but maybe just a smidge less than the two Toy Story films.

The film starts off with what's widely been called "a Bambi moment", after which we're introduced to the clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) raising his son Nemo (Alexander Gould) alone. Nemo is an exuberant, adventurous boy, albeit with a stunted left fin, while Marlin is an overprotective, somewhat paranoid father. But on his first day of school, Nemo is captured by a human for an aquarium, and Marlin is left with the almost-insurmountable task of trying to find and rescue him.

He's aided in this through a chance encounter with the smart but short-term-memory-impaired Dory (Ellen DeGeneres, who might have stolen the film had the animators let her) who travels with him on a quest involving well-mannered sharks, surfer-dude sea turtles, and other denizens of the deep. Meanwhile, Nemo has his own coming-of-age experience in the fish tank.

Finding Nemo is a father-son film, in a similar vein as the excellent Frequency, in that the characters get to ponder what they mean to each other, and the nature of their relationship, through their being separated, which gives each of them the opportunity to grow.

The film's downsides are obvious: It has some extremely melodramatic moments, and these will either work for you or not. (Myself, I'm a sucker for this sort of melodrama. The beginning, even though I knew they were just playing my heart like a violin, was very moving.) The structure is basically that of a standard quest and doesn't deviate from that much (though it mixes in the coming-of-age story pretty well).

But what it does well, it does very well! For sheer humor, I liked it better than Monsters, as it had me laughing loudly more than once. And I think being reined in to portray things based on real life rather than the anything-goes world of Monstropolis actually made the visuals more imaginative. And some of the characters are great! Dory, of course. And Deb and her "sister" Flo (haha - Deb and Flo, geddit?), the turtles, the sharks, and - maybe most of all - the pelicans and the gulls. (Debbi and I have been saying "Mine? Mine?" all day since seeing the film.)

But the film is really made because it's successful thematically. Monsters never to me felt like it rose above being an unusually wonky "buddy film"; the characters were fairly admirable coming in, fairly admirable coming out, and basically did the right thing after a reasonable amount of soul-searching. Nemo has Marlin overcoming his fears and learning how to trust, and Nemo learning what he's capable of and how he fits into the community around him, and along the way they both learn how much they love each other. Only the Toy Story films, I think - and particularly the first - really have this depth of theme.

Plus, Lucy should go see this film for the Tiki bits alone. (Uh, at least, I think they're Tiki bits...)

Oh, uh, the animation? Excellent as one expects. The human figures are getting better and better, and everything else seemed nearly flawless. The city skyline was particularly impressive.

Overall, another fun and worthwhile Pixar film. Go see it!