Finding Nemo (2003) – Nostalgia Central

Pixar, the animation house behind Monsters, Inc., A Bug’s Life and the two Toy Story classics, lands another winner for Disney. Kids stuff? You tell me.

Little Nemo no sooner loses his mum than he’s kidnapped, leaving his dad to find him before Sonny Boy is sold off or flushed. If the characters weren’t fish, and deliciously comic, the damn thing would be traumatic.

The voice work is exceptional, from Albert Brooks as Marlin, the neurotic clownfish dad, to Barry Humphries (best known as Dame Edna Everage)  as Bruce the shark and Geoffrey Rush as a nosy pelican.

Ellen DeGeneres is howlingly funny as Dory, a scatterbrained blue tang who travels with Marlin through the terrors of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

They eventually find Nemo living in a fish tank owned by a dentist in Sydney (Bill Hunter).

The doc’s young niece, Darla (LuLu Ebeling), has braces and a nasty streak for fish. She enters to the theme from Psycho.

The view from the fish tank to the dentist’s chair and the window overlooking the harbour is just one of the visual wonders of a film that rewrites the book on animating water (which experts say is the hardest element to render).

Co-writer and director Andrew Stanton, who also provides the surfer dude voice of a helpful turtle named Crush, makes miracles look easy.

The result is a thing of beauty, entertaining and way cool.

Marlin
Albert Brooks
Dory
Ellen DeGeneres
Nemo
Alexander Gould
Gill
Willem Dafoe
Bloat
Brad Garrett
Peach
Allison Janney
Gurgle
Austin Pendleton
Bubbles
Stephen Root
Deb/Flo
Vicki Lewis
Jacques
Joe Ranft
Nigel
Geoffrey Rush
Crush
Andrew Stanton
Coral
Elizabeth Perkins
Squirt
Nicholas Bird
Mr Ray
Bob Peterson
Bruce
Barry Humphries
Anchor
Eric Bana
Chum
Bruce Spence
Dentist
Bill Hunter
Darla
LuLu Ebeling
Tad
Jordan Ranft
Pearl
Erica Beck
Sheldon
Erik Per Sullivan

Director
Andrew Stanton
Lee Unkrich