If you’re Christian, Tom Perrault doesn’t want you to see “Finding Nemo.” Perrault, the Weblog editor of the highly religious Crosswalk Web site, wrote an article claiming Disney and Pixar are promoting an anti-family agenda with their latest animated offering.
And just how are these companies spreading their anti-Christian message? By convincing the openly gay Ellen DeGeneres to be a fish.
“With literally hundreds and hundreds of perfectly viable options, Disney goes with someone whose personal lifestyle is antithetical to the throngs of families who are supposed to eagerly flock to the theaters on May 30,” he wrote.
But feel free to ignore the wacky religious guy, because “Nemo” is set to be Pixar’s fifth consecutive smash hit – although after “Toy Story,” “Toy Story 2,” “A Bug’s Life” and “Monsters, Inc.,” that should already be obvious.
But “Nemo” is a little bit different from its predecessors. Instead of continuing the classic good-versus-evil story, “Nemo” is an adventure tale, with nary a Jafarious villain in sight. After a hungry barracuda takes his wife and most of his children from him, Marlin, a clown fish voiced by Albert Brooks, becomes a neurotic overprotective father to his last child, Nemo (Alexander Gould), partly because Nemo has trouble swimming with his disfigured right fin.
On his first day of school, Nemo and a few of his new friends head toward the drop off, the area where their safe little reef turns into the expansive ocean. This, of course, leads to disaster when scuba divers get their hands on Nemo, which forces Marlin to conquer his fear of the unknown and save his son.
But while the story does slightly differ from most of the other animated pictures, “Nemo” is still very much the same movie as its predecessors. Pixar’s backgrounds have always been beautifully rendered (which is still true for “Nemo”), and the writing is always sharp and funny for adults, but still kid-friendly (again, true for “Nemo”). The only problem is these things are starting to get old and aren’t quite enough to keep these films interesting.
This is where DeGeneres enters the picture. She voices Dory, a blue tang with short-term memory loss. After bumping into Marlin just off the reef, Dory offers to accompany him on his journey to find his son in Sydney (Dory read the tag on a discarded pair of goggles). A combination of Dory’s mental affliction and DeGeneres’ comedic timing vault the character from goofy sidekick to enchanting scene-stealer. In fact, that same combination could also vault the comedian back into the spotlight, which she rightfully deserves (as long as she avoids anything remotely like “Mr. Wrong” in the future).
Besides DeGeneres, the rest of the supporting cast also provides a diverse and vivid world under the sea. Barry Humphries, Eric Bana and Bruce Spense are wonderful as a trio of sharks who have sworn “fish are our friends” – at least until they try to eat Marlin and Dory. Andrew Stanton, who also directed the picture, is also terrific as Crush, a surfer turtle that helps the fish ride the Eastern Australian Current towards Sydney.
The rest of the supporting cast – which includes Willem Dafoe, Alison Janney, Vicki Lewis and Stephen Root (who is hysterical as Bubbles, a yellow tang obsessed with a treasure chest that emits bubbles) – gets to interact with Nemo, the latest inhabitant of a dentist office fish tank. After initiating Nemo to the gang as “Shark Bate,” Gill (Dafoe) hatches a far-fetched scheme to get Nemo back out into the ocean before he becomes a present for the dentist’s fish-killing niece Darla (cue the “Psycho” theme here).
Film theorists will see the picture, which is ultimately about the intense bond between parent and child, as the inevitable response to the dissolution of the all American family after the rise in teenage sex and the rash of school shootings. But such intense analysis of a film like “Finding Nemo” is unfair to the film. It should be seen for exactly what it is – an extremely sweet and cute kids film that will be enjoyed by the child in everyone.
