Yeah, when it was in theaters, I went to see it alone, and was sitting in the aisle with a bunch of high school kids and was positive they were going to start ragging on me for crying, but when I looked over, they were all crying too.
I put the DVD in recently just to check out a new TV, and couldn’t even make it to the opening credits, for the same reasons you mention. I think part of the reason the water looks so realistic in that movie is because my eyes are filled with it the whole time.
AND, I had put in The Life Aquatic a while ago to make sure I was quoting that line right, and even just that scene completely out of context had me sobbing. I need to toughen up a bit.
In “Finding Nemo,” right after Marlin and Nemo find each other, and all the fish get trapped in the net. They’re panicking and flopping around as the net starts to come out of the water…and then they all start swimming down.
I’ll second the intro to Finding Nemo. “I promise, I will never let anything happen to you.” Then they fade from the egg into the sun shining through the waters, and then the main theme starts playing, which has got to be one of my favorite movie soundtracks…that’s one of the few times I’ve ever cried during a movie.
…and they’re fish! You’ve got to hand it to Pixar for being able to pull that off!
I don’t care if it’s corny, I tear up when Alan Rickman, as Dr. Lazarus in Galaxy Quest, speaks that line from the series he hates so much, to the dying Quilig(?)
Quilig is on the floor, bleeding, and “Dr. Lazarus” bends down, looks in his eyes, and tells him “Quilig, by Grabthar’s hammer, by the suns of Worvan, you shall be avenged.”
I totally forgot to mention one important part about that line from Finding Nemo (this is about the lines themselves, after all): In the very beginning, when they’re naming all the eggs, Marlin decides “This half will me Marlin Jr. and this half…Coral Jr.!” “I like Nemo!” “Okay, this one will be Nemo, but most of them should be Marlen Jr.!” Then, just after the line I mentioned, he says “…Nemo.” Needless to say, the actual line in the movie has more emotional impact than my description.
I may be remembering a scene and not a line (there may have been dialog), but in the movie Angus, after Angus’ grampa (George C. Scott) dies and Angus goes down to the playground where grampa’s cronies play chess every day, and Angus walks up to the chessboard and lays a chesspiece on it’s side to let the old folks know George C. was dead, well, something definitely got in my eyes.
Dogs dying in movies always wreck me. The movie Crusoe is fairly forgettable, except for the one scene where Aidan Quinn gets down on his knees and prays for God to not take his dog away.