From the makers of Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. comes this animated tale of life in the ocean. The basic story follows a father clown fish attempting to find his lost son. Albert Brooks gives voice to this father with his particular brand of dry humor and nervous cadence. He is joined by Ellen DeGeneres as a fellow fish that helps him along his way, and provides plenty of hilarity to boot. In this journey, they encounter sharks that have decided to make fish their friends instead of their lunch, sea turtles that ride the ocean streams as though the were killer waves and one particular pelican that helps them take the search to dry land. Meanwhile, Nemo (the son voiced by Alexander Gould) is befriended by a handful of helpful and extremely humorous inhabitants of a dentist's fish tank. Other voices contributing include Willem Dafoe, Geoffrey Rush, Allison Janney, Stephen Root and Brad Garrett.
The look is spectacular. The artists have completely captured the appearance and feel of the ocean from the waves reflecting the sunlight to the murkiness of the deep sea. Every underwater creature is fully believable in their movements and attitudes related to their particular voices. Each actor does a wonderful job bringing both humor and emotion to their characters. All together, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich (the directors) have presented an animated tale that feels entirely real. Two minutes into the thing and you forget that it's animation. This movie has made all kinds of money and rightly so. When you consider some of the horrible movies that have made their way to your local theatre in the past several years, it is refreshing that at least one studio can reliably provide good entertainment time and time again. I still prefer Monsters, Inc. of all the animated movies that have made the rounds in the last decade or so, but Finding Nemo is absolutely worthy of the praise it has received from kids and parents alike. Rent it today. That is all.
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