Review: Finding Nemo

Pixar does it again, with another movie that scores with kids and adults, featuring even more eye-popping animation.

Albert Brooks (born Albert Einstein) plays Marlin, a timid clownfish living on the Great Barrier Reef. A single father to Nemo, Marlin is powerless to keep Nemo from being captured on the first day of school. Marlin sets out to find and rescue Nemo, wherever he may be. On the way, Marlin encounters all sorts of sea life, and befriends forgetful Dory, voiced by Ellen Degeneres.

Meanwhile, Nemo is trapped in the aquarium of a Sydney dentist. Willem Dafoe plays brilliantly to type as the battle-scarred angelfish Gill who’s tried to escape the aquarium so often he’s lost count.

Unlike Dreamworks SKG’s Shrek, the art never becomes subservient to reality — the graphics are by turns spot-on realistic and brilliantly stylized.

No Randy Newman music, a bit of a surprise after he finally won the Oscar for Monsters, Inc.

At our screening, we also got a sneak preview of The Incredibles, Pixar’s next movie, due in November 2004. And, being Pixar, there was also a short, Knickknack, from the files of Pixar.

I love Pixar movies. I once took my entire team to see Toy Story 2 in place of our weekly meeting; one advantage of working in a building with a cinema. I got all 8 of my pretty sharp group within 10 feet of the box office before anyone even suspected my nefarious scheme.

Don’t forget to stick around for the credits; Pixar always makes it worth your while.