Fish Tales

Pixar puts out a water-borne masterpiece with "Finding Nemo."

By Michael Sean McGowan

    For many years it seems like we have been witnessing the death of children's movies.  Some argue that the reason for this is that Hollywood money-grabbers find more value in pulling in profits from ultra-violet, ultra-sexual R-rated movies.  This isn't completely true, when you also consider that the R-rated movie has been fading as well, leaving the maudlin PG-13 in its wake.  But the reason why children's movies do not have the respect they once did during the golden age of Disney is one of pure economics.  Parents who take their kids to the movies, as a whole, do not tend to be a lot that checks reviews to find out if the movie they are going to see is a brilliant example of creativity and imagination or spittle put on celluloid.  No matter how bad these movies are, they have a built-in audience that simply tolerates and does not question.  Add to this that family watchdog groups rate their films almost completely on the basis of objectionable content and not on quality and you can see why the majority of movies made for kids are inoffensive but also rote, uninspired, and, let's face it, just plain stupid.

    Yet, six years ago, a little known production company called Pixar pulled out a trump card.  It's first major feature film, Toy Story, was heralded completely on the technological precedent of being the first computer-animated Disney film.  However, when Toy Story was released, all talk of the digital revolution that it brought with it stopped and critics and audiences gawked at something else: a movie with an excellent story line, well-drawn characters, and witty and intelligent dialogue.  It was a movie that inspired kids, not pandered to the most base instincts.  Not only that, it has hardly a slog for the grown-ups, either.  The script had enough in-jokes and pop-culture references to keep the over-the-hill entertained (I know I went to see it three times).

    It seems today that Robert Rodriguez (who helms the Spy Kids movies) and Pixar are about the only ones interested in putting out quality kids' movies and this tradition continues strongly with Finding Nemo.  It has all the trademarks of the a great Pixar film: mind-blowing animation, terrific writing, and a sparkling wit.  I'm reminded of of something I said about seeing Godfrey Reggio's ambitious but misguided Naqyoqatsi- how it was a movie of spectacular moments, but overall not an experience that you would share with others.  Finding Nemo is more than that- it is more than the sum of its parts.  It is an experience.

    It starts with characters who are recognizable but not routine.  On a coral bed in the Great Barrier Reef, a clown fish named Marlin (neurotic Albert Brooks) and his wife are ready to begin a new life in a sea anemone along with their 500 soon-to-be hatched eggs.  That is, until tragedy strikes that leaves the mother dead and all of the eggs save one destroyed.  Traumatized and lonely, Marlin determines to raise his only son and protect him.

    When we catch up years later, Marlin's protective nature borders on pure trauma.  His son, Nemo, was born with one deformed fin and Marlin frets about allowing him into the open waters where danger is plenty (the need for people to chart their own path is a common theme of the film).  But in an act of defiance Nemo runs away and is captured by a scuba diving dentist who places the young clownfish in his office aquarium.

    Marlin begins a trek to find and rescue his son and in pure "quest" fashion meets a number of comrades and enemies along the way.  One of whom is a scatter-brained blue tang fish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) who seems to have a serious Memento thing going on.  Also memorable are the trio of sharks in an AA-style group for "fish eaters anonymous" ("fish are friends, not food," is their mantra) who stage an "intervention" for one of their own when he gets the whiff of blood in the water.  This leads to one of the most vigorous chase scenes in the movie which feeds through the bowels of a sunken submarine and into a field of mines.  There is also the pack of nomad-like sea turtles who seem to endlessly cruise the East Australian Current.  The director, Andrew Stanton, pitches the voice of their leader, Crush, in a perfect surfer-dude dialect that doesn't seem clichéd or insulting.

    I could go on for pages with things I found wondrous about Finding Nemo.  I won't.  This is a movie jam packed with surprises and you deserve to relish each one.  It is like a piñata, it bursts open into a rain of color and pure joy.

    Finding Nemo is currently sitting at #1 across the country, no doubt with help from the Disney logo plaster all over it.  However, Disney has fallen off the wagon so far in the what it has produced lately that one wonders what will become of the partnership when the Disney-Pixar contract expires in two years.  Disney is in a rut and apparently sees the solution in recycling- making sequels to every "classic" that bears their name (I'm waiting to see if they get desperate enough to do a sequel to Song of the South).  Disney made sequels to Atlantis, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King and produced garbage.  Pixar made a sequel to Toy Story and made a masterpiece.  Who does it sound like should be guiding who?  A