Rent Finding Nemo (2003)

The best animated movie of recent years - Finding Nemo review by PV

This movie is just great - and like all those old Disney films, works on two levels, so both little kids and adults can enjoy it. There are loads of jokes and also dialogue that will fly right over little ones' heads - but the animation and perfectly-paced story are so great, they won't mind! I am SO glad they screenwriters didn't dumb down for the kids and take out the French dialogue or big words, for example, or the references to drinking and drugs (the chances are, children's book editors would).

The movie doesn't shy away from the realities of the ocean - in that fish and eggs are eaten, for example. (Sadly of course, by now the Chinese will have caught and eaten most of the sea life on display here and made some larger creatures extinct...90% of sharks have been killed in the last 15 years for their fins in the vile and disgusting Chinese shark fin industry.)

I think of tedious animated movies with awful songs (That Frog Princess one...) and can't help wishing they'd make more movies like Finding Nemo, though I can't see how they could make a sequel.

The animation is just glorious - attention to detail wonderful. Perfect characterisation, esp with Dory and the sharks (voiced by Barry Humphries AKA Dame Edna, no less) and snappy, intelligent dialogue.

My only slight criticism is the 'huggy' American-style father-son relationship - all self-esteem and therapy-speak - and the pc 'single father' shtick. BUT it doesn't lecture and it's not TOO schmaltzy, thank goodness, and is countered by events and the dry wit of the dialogue.

A thoroughly enjoyable movie. I could watch it again right now. 5 stars!

Something to Root For - Finding Nemo review by griggs

Most of the modern animated films I’ve caught are short on jeopardy — plenty of gentle peril, softly resolved. That’s not what animation did to me as a child. In the 1980s my parents had to remove me, in floods, from Bambi (grief), Dumbo (separation and cruelty), and Pinocchio (body horror and the terror that the world could reshape you into something lost).

Those films left marks. Finding Nemo isn’t cruel in that way, but Andrew Stanton remembers that kids’ films need teeth — sharks with them, for one. Marlin’s open-ocean odyssey is genuinely perilous, while Nemo’s tank-bound prison break hums with tension. And Dory, who could easily have become too much, turns out to be the film’s secret weapon: funny, warm, and oddly steady in a story about panic.

That’s the difference. The jeopardy gives you something to root for rather than wounds to carry. You fret, you exhale, you grin.

Enjoy this one - Finding Nemo review by AR

Watched with my 6yr old - he was riveted, and I enjoyed it too. Not too scary, and quite funny as well.