Finding Nemo (2003)
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Nemo, an adventurous young clownfish, is unexpectedly taken from his Great Barrier Reef home to a dentist's office aquarium. It's up to his worrisome father Marlin and a friendly but forgetful fish Dory to bring Nemo home -- meeting vegetarian sharks, surfer dude turtles, hypnotic jellyfish, hungry seagulls, and more along the way.
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21 films that influenced Finding Nemo
What critics say influenced Finding Nemo
For not only do these Sean Penn-mimicking sea turtles slowly slip into a stronger story about paternal love and overcoming fear, but Finding Nemo also connects with these awfully dark themes that are strangely reminiscent of Walt's great classics like Bambi and Dumbo.
The death of Nemo's mother, which occurs early in the film (and is offscreen - no blood or overt violence to speak of) recalls a similar event from the classic Bambi.
The opener, in which clownfish Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) loses his wife and most of their eggs in a barracuda attack, ranks right up there with “Bambi.”
The movie's opening sequence depicts a traumatic loss that brings to mind old-school Disney pics such as Bambi; granted, it's handled in a way that probably won't sink your kids into the slough of despond, but the scene is pretty powerful.
Right off the bat Stanton pulls a "Bambi," when a fishy mom disappears after a scary barracuda attack.
Cartoony character design notwithstanding, Finding Nemo has a love for the natural world that’s a credit to the tradition of Bambi and The Lion King .
Then there are the insider references (the main shark is named Bruce, possibly after Spielberg's nickname for the mechanical one in "Jaws") and other bits of humor that are like icing on the cake.
From the play of sunlight on the ocean waves, to the thousands of saw-like notches on the teeth of the Great White Shark Bruce (the name of whom is a little nod to Jaws’ mechanical monster), to the perky freckles that dot Dory’s nose, each frame of Finding Nemo is a visual delight.
One of the sharks is slyly called Bruce, the name of the mechanical shark used in Steven Spielberg's "Jaws."
Their leader, named Bruce after the mechanical shark in “Jaws,” is voiced by Barry Humphries, best known for his stage performances as Dame Edna Everage.
"Finding Nemo" has a laundry list of strong support, from Allison Janney's starfish and Brad Garrett's blowfish to Barry "Dame Edna" Humphries' great white shark Bruce (a nice in-joke for "Jaws" aficionados) and Geoffrey Rush's sympathetic pelican.
The early screening of "Finding Nemo" was preceded by the 1989 Pixar creation "Knick Knack," a marvelous early use of CGI that also displays the storytelling talents of its creators that have wonderfully been magnified to feature length miracles.
From the pink jellyfish meadow to a creepy sunken submarine, the computer graphics in "Finding Nemo" make "The Little Mermaid" look like a coloring book.
The Little Mermaid ), this movie offers up another dose of computer-animated genius no less vibrant than Pixar?s previous full-length outings, inaugurated in 1995 by the revolutionary Toy Story and followed with astoundingly consistent success by A Bug?s Life , Toy Story 2 , and Monsters, Inc .
Fourteen years later, however, with the imminent release of Finding Nemo, another undersea animated picture from Disney, The Little Mermaid looks like something that Cronus kicked across the floor of his cave in yet another fit of paternal pique.
Finding Nemo couldn’t be anything other than computer animation, because its essence is inseparable from the splendor of its undersea world, realized in quasi-photographic grandeur and richness unmatched by the noblest attempts of hand-drawn animation (Disney’s “Arab Dance” fish in Fantasia ’s “Nutcracker Suite” sequence; The Little Mermaid; even Miyazaki’s Ponyo ).
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Despondent, Marlin searches the sea for him, helped along by the ditsy Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), whose gimmick is that she has short-term memory loss, à la Guy Pearce in “Memento.”
To rescue his son from a fate he can barely understand, Marlin hooks up with a perky little fish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), whose short-term memory rivals that of Guy Pearce in Memento.
A blue tang fish, Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), with short-term memory loss -- shades of Memento -- agrees to help.
Marlin picks up a travel companion, a blue tang named Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres with a sweet loopiness), who's like a screwball comedy character by way of "Memento."
Shortly into his rigorous quest, Marlin comes across Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang with short-term memory loss (thing "Memento" of the sea) whose simple way of looking at things does more than just frustrate the anxious clownfish.
Disney's "Pinocchio" meets "Memento" in the latest charming, computer animated film from executive producer John Lasseter's Pixar.
And not only does Finding Nemo happily spoof Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and The Birds, it also plunges headlong into frights—literally, like when Dory and Marlin (Albert Brooks) dive into the blackness of the ocean floor in order to retrieve a ski mask.
And not only does Finding Nemo happily spoof Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and The Birds, it also plunges headlong into frights—literally, like when Dory and Marlin (Albert Brooks) dive into the blackness of the ocean floor in order to retrieve a ski mask.
On Blade Runner, Ridley Scott drenched his sets in darkness and rain to cover up for the cheap sets, but in Finding Nemo, no such ruse is necessary.
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As for the storyline, it's a familiar one to anybody who's ever sat through earlier Disney films (both animated and live-action), employing elements previously seen in everything from Bambi (loss of a parent) to Pinocchio (accepting responsibility) to The Incredible Journey (braving impossible odds to be reunited with a loved one).
The sturdy story, in which single-dad clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) and his son Nemo (Alexander Gould) are separated by a deep-sea-diving dentist who nets the latter for his office fishtank, is a well-crafted line on which to hang scores of lovely sequences: Surfaces shimmer with meticulous underwater light schemes, schools of fish so large (as the Yellow Submarine joke goes) they should be called universities scatter and coalesce as if ruled by a single mind, a jungle of jellyfish glows with weird menace and unearthly beauty.