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FINDING NEMO (green)
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"Fish are friends," booms Bruce the Shark (Barry Humphries, the immortal DAME EDNA EVERIDGE), "not food!" And then he and his two companions smile at morose clown anemone fish Marlin (Albert Brooks, DEFENDING YOUR LIFE)..
That's 4,800 teeth, as another character says later.
But Nemo, Marlin's only surviving son, has gone missing on his first day of school, scooped off the reef by a diving rubberfish. No matter the dangers, no matter his own neuroses and fears, Marlin will find Nemo if he has to swim the whole Barrier Reef to do it.
Meanwhile Nemo awakens to find himself an ornament in the office of well-meaning bluff dentist Sherman (Bill Hunter, an Australian icon in everything from NEWSIES to PRISCILLA to MURIEL'S WEDDING). Here Nemo encounters those who came from fish stores – porcupine fish Bloat (Brad Garrett), fairy basslet Gurgle, starfish Peach (Alison Janney) … and embittered harlequin triggerfish Gill (Willem Dafoe, THE ENGLISH PATIENT), the leader of the pack. It is Gill, scarred from his own reef encounter, who will plot Nemo's escape ….
Of course the story is filled with every lost-boy cliché imaginable, from the initiation ritual where Nemo has to swim through the cauldron of bubbles atop Mount Wannahackaloogie, to the unknown reserves of courage in both father and son, to their tearful reunion.
What distinguishes FINDING NEMO is the mouth-agape joy with which its animators created the world, the wit with which they scattered a basketful of Easter eggs (small moments imperceptible to children but deliriously clever to adults), and the gusto with which its actors delivered their lines ("The human mouth is a filthy place," says Gurgle).
The animation is marvelous, not just in its dimensionality but also in capturing species-specific fish behaviors, and then vocalizing them with exquisitely apt dialog. An Oz-fest from director through cast, the film was obviously done by genuine divers, people who have spent far too much air looking cross-eyed at reef fish and wondering what they're thinking. (Nancy and I have dived the Great Barrier Reef and confronted fightin' anemone fish, and they are every bit as feistily territorial as Marlin.)
The acting – voicing, really – is top-notch: Willem Dafoe (THE ENGLISH PATIENT'S) as Gill, the embittered tough-love harlequin triggerfish; Geoffrey Rush (SHINE) as hyperkinetic pelican Nigel; and Ellen DeGeneres (ED TV) as cross-eyed amnesiac ditzy blue tang Dory. But the real star is director Andrew Stanton (who also co-wrote the screenplay), whose Crush, a wise old Hawksbill turtle, is 150 years old but still totally young, dude.
And it is charming, filled with the love of fathers for sons, and sons for fathers, and the endless desire of every son to shout to his father, "Lookit me, Dad! Look what I did? Didja see? Didjasee?"
Diver types may find themselves seeing FINDING NEMO twice (parents will be seeing it forever, and probably enjoying it every time). Everyone else should see it at least once.