Finding Nemo

Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Coral (Elizabeth Perkins) have just moved into a new reef and are ready to start a family.  They have over one hundred eggs ready to hatch. But unfortunately Coral and all but one of the eggs are eaten by a giant fish. In the next scene we see Marlin with his young son Nemo (Alexander Gould). Nemo is ready to go to school, however Marlin has become over cautious, to the point of paranoia which is not helped by the fact that Nemo has one fin shorter than the other. He insists that Nemo is unable to do things for himself, this leads Nemo to swim out to open water and touch a boat. He is then taken by divers.

Marlin, in a frenzy swims out after the boat and meets up with Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) a very forgetful, fun-loving fish who agrees to help him find his son. Just as they are about to continue, they are found by a shark called Bruce (Barry Humphries) and are brought back to a sunken submarine in an underwater minefield for a 12 step program to help sharks stop eating fish.  There Marlin finds a mask that one of the divers had on. After finding out it says Sydney on it, and blowing up the minefield, and running from one of those light bulb fish, they are one their way to Sydney.

Nemo, on the other hand , is put in an aquarium in a dentist's office and is befriended by the neurotic fish that live there. One of the fish, Gill (William Dafoe), is also from the ocean, unlike the others who are all bought.  He has come up with many a number of escape plans , but now he's confident that his latest one will work, because Nemo is small enough to fit into the filter. He wants Nemo to jam it, so the dentist (Bill Hunter) will have to take them out in order to clean the tank. Then they can make their escape. Well, it doesn't work.  And they also discover that Nemo is going to be a present for the dentist's niece Darla (LuLu Ebeling) a.k.a. The Fish Killer.

After what seems like forever, and having to go through many trials and meeting new friends, Marlin and Dory finally reach Sydney and find Nemo. They think he's dead and Marlin goes off alone. Only Nemo isn't dead, he was just pretending so the dentist will flush him down to toilet.

He gets out and meets up with Dory and together they find Marlin and everything works out fin in the end. Eventually. Dory has a family, Marlin in no longer paranoid and Nemo is now going to school....where's the good in that?

Anyway. I love this movie. It's funny, it has heart, all the characters are colourful and amazing. It does drag near the end a bit.  At one point it felt like they were adding scenes just for the sake of adding scenes. But it's still another great movie from Pixar.

What really made this movie were the tertiary characters. Marlin, Dory and Nemo were all great, but this movie would not have been the same without the sea turtles or the seagulls. They are what made this movie rich and hilarious. 

Grade: 8/10