Finding Nemo is, of course, the latest Pixar/Disney movie. It was actually underneath my radar; I’d heard about it, I even knew a couple of people who were working on it, but I wasn’t all that jazzed to see it. I mean, I knew I’d see it eventually, but there was no rush. Pixar always does excellent work: flawless animation and effects; great character design; a good-natured sense of humor; and a blend of sentimentality, action, and comic relief that they’ve almost got down to a science.
I liked Monsters, Inc. an awful lot, but could see the beginnings of a “Pixar Formula” that kept it from really sticking with me. And that was with an interesting concept; Nemo is about a fish searching for his son. And the ads show the surfer-dude sea turtle. It must be boring, or overly-sentimental and formulaic. But today a friend of mine who’d been to a preview screening and told me I should check it out.
Holy crap, this is a great movie. Definitely the best I’ve seen this year (and I loved X-Men 2), and it might even have ousted Toy Story 2 and Lilo and Stitch as my favorite animated movie. The voice work is perfect, for starters. Often when they cast stars as cartoon voices, they lapse into their schtick, and you can see the actors instead of the characters. I thought this was going to be especially noticeable with Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres, who are both known for their personality quirks more than anything else. But they never stopped being their characters, which is a credit to both the actors and the animators/character designers. And all the incidental voices are dead-on perfect as well; no celebrity cameos or voices that sound “fake” or as if they were done by a friend of the director.
It’s almost a shame the animation is so perfect, because nothing stands out as a notable achievement – it’s all so amazingly well-done that there are no bad parts to make the good parts look better.
The effects and camera work are stunning. It’s clear these guys are at the point where they can do anything they can imagine, and they’re just running with it. With Pixar’s other movies, you forget that you’re looking at CG and just accept that what you’re seeing is real. With Nemo, it’s as if they’ve realized they’ve conquered the mundane photo-realistic world, and can get back to blowing you away with visuals. You still never think, “I’m looking at CG,” but it doesn’t fade away into the background, either.
And the story is surprisingly “mature” for a G-rated movie. I was tearing up all through it, but never felt manipulated. The themes aren’t as maudlin as “true friends stick by you” or “always believe in yourself,” although there are undercurrents of that. Instead, it’s a story about anxiety, and letting go of that anxiety and just living (which is why Albert Brooks was perfectly cast, of course). It’s filled with moments that could be considered formulaic, but they’re so deftly handled that it never seems like formula – everything in the story happens so naturally that it all seems like a real series of events in the characters’ lives, instead of a story constructed to convey a message.
Plus, there’s a hilarious preview of The Incredibles before the movie.
So don’t be put off by the somewhat lackluster marketing campaign, like I was. I think you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted not to enjoy the hell out of this movie.
But you can bet I’ll try to drag them to the theater toot sweet tomorrow and indulge ourselves with some Pixar brilliance.
