A fabulously fishy tale

Whatever else 2003 will be remembered for, it will go down as a golden year for
animation. I cannot recall a time when so many animated movies of such consistently high quality have been released, week after week.

Following the two-dimensional Belleville Rendez-Vous and Spirited Away, we have
the latest collaboration between Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios,
whose CGI animations from Toy Story to Monsters Inc have grown steadily
more impressive. Finding Nemo is their finest work so far.

In many ways, it is a classic Disney tale. A family disrupted by tragedy
must undergo a further trial or quest to recover their true selves and
become better people. Or, in this case, fish. Marlin (Albert Brooks) and his
wife are waiting for their 400-odd children to hatch when disaster strikes in
the form of a terrifying barracuda. Marlin awakes to find his wife and all
but one of the eggs gone.

The remaining son, Nemo (Alexander Gould), is also handicapped by having one fin smaller than the other, which Marlin refers to in doting PC terms as his “special fin”. Marlin’s over-protectiveness fosters a rebellious streak in Nemo, who wilfully wanders off into the big ocean on his first day at school and is promptly caught in a diver’s net. Transported to an aquarium in a Sydney dentist’s surgery, Nemo resigns himself to captivity until his fellow inmates
concoct an escape plan.

Meanwhile, Marlin, accompanied by a blue female fish, Dory (Ellen
DeGeneres), who suffers from shortterm memory loss, swims off in
search of Nemo with only the address on the diver’s mask (dropped from the
boat into the sea) to guide them.

Apart from the breathtaking animation — the underwater backgrounds,
the above-surface seascape and even the dry-land sequences are portrayed
with extraordinary depth and detail - the individual anthropomorphic
characters based on genuine fish (clown fish, sharks, blue and yellow
tang, even Portuguese men-o’war jellyfish) are superbly realised.

The story has a genuine emotional depth and its psychological furniture
is logical and appropriate. Above all, the script is terrifically funny; each
fish suffers from some kind of “human” disorder — from Marlin’s
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder to the baby squid’s tendency to “ink” itself
whenever threatened. There are throwaway lines only an adult
audience would appreciate. When Dory (brilliantly voiced by DeGeneres) is
talking in her sleep, she murmurs, “Yes, I’m a natural blue.”

That the script and characterisations are better than most live-action
movies these days is sobering. Finding Nemo offers as much in terms of
thrills, frights, humour and psychological insight as it does in pure
technical skill, proving that a movie can be art without being an “art” movie.

Finding Nemo
Cert: U