Buena Vista Home Entertainment | November 4, 2003 | DVD
Who'd've thought they could draw a fish that actually looks like Ellen DeGeneres? The comedian's spirited turn as Dory, the bright blue tang fish with no short-term memory, is one of the most delightful aspects of a film packed with thrills. It's a classic quest story -- a father in search of his lost son, who, in turn, just wants to get home. Albert Brooks voices the fretful father, a clownfish named Marlin, who has done his best for wee Nemo after his wife and a few hundred other spawn were eaten by a barracuda. But Nemo is at an age where he wants to push his boundaries, and an act of defiance on his first day of school gets him scooped up by a scuba diver and hauled off to a dentist's office aquarium in Sydney.
While Nemo is meeting his new tank-mates (among them Gil, the battle-scarred veteran marvelously voiced by Willem Dafoe) and helping craft a daring escape plan, Marlin is frantically searching for him, with questionable "help" from the loopy Dory. Along the way, the unlikely pair of rescuers meets a stunning array of charismatic critters: a trio of sharks-in-recovery, a herd of surfer-dude sea turtles, a forest of lovely but ominous jellyfish and a flock of beady-eyed seagulls with a one-word vocabulary: "Mine? Mine! Mine!"
The CG animation of the awesome underwater setting is stunning and the jokes are a decent mix of for-the-kids schtick and more grownup asides. The initial scene in which Marlin's family is reduced to one is, quite frankly, traumatic, but past that point, it's pretty much smooth sailing, though the shark scenes get a bit crazy volume-wise. All in all, this is a fish tale worth telling.
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