Animation keeps getting better and better, but while it continues to be marketed to kids, it will always be slightly, well, juvenile.
When a clownfish's wife and all but one of his thousand kids are killed, he becomes neurotically protective of his son Nemo. So when Nemo gets caught by scuba divers, Marlin (Albert Brooks) must set out on a life changing adventure to find him. Along the way, he gets much help from a memory challenged fish named Dory (Ellen Degeneres). Meanwhile, Nemo and his new friends in the fish tank at a dentist's office plot their escape.
Pixar knows what it's doing and here is no exception. While nothing in the film looks real, it definitely looks textured. It looks like it could be real if the world were made of plastic. So when an animation company makes a showcase of its talents, there's not much point complaining about the how trite and silly the plot is. But that's what I do.
Altogether silliness aside, Nemo's characters are generally likeable. Brooks plays a neurotic mess in mid-life crisis, if you can imagine that. Degeneres fares best as the forgetful but well-intended sidekick. Willem Dafoe looks pretty good as a fish and Brad Garret has a voice ideal for animation.
The film features some amusing and well-animated sharks, who are desperately trying to quit eating fish in a rather obvious metaphor for drug addiction. But it raises questions that can't be answered in a cartoon. Why shouldn't they eat fish? They're sharks, right? A seriously stoned tortoise makes for a good comedic scene, but the film's funniest moments come from its interpretation of seagulls whose entire lexicon is the word "mine".
But fish can be a harder sell than some other animals. For some reason, I believe a talking dog truly loves its puppies. But a fish with thousands of offspring is easier to swallow only in a Japanese restaurant. Yes, I do realize how silly this review has gotten.
So if you're a computer animation fan, then Finding Nemo surely doesn't disappoint. In addition, the jokes land pretty well and the adventure is genuinely entertaining. For the most part Finding Nemo accomplishes what it set out to do. But the film's gentle Saturday morning kids show feel might leave some of us feeling a little unfulfilled. B+
