HOME | DD

Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with the film where a father searches the entire ocean for his son.

Nemo is a young clownfish who lives with his father Marlin in an anemone in the Great Barrier Reef. Nemo, despite being hampered by a lame right fin, is eager to explore life around the ocean. Marlin, however, is overprotective of him, having lost his wife Coral and all their other eggs in a barracuda attack, leaving Nemo as his only child. On Nemo's first day of school, Marlin unintentionally embarrasses him, and while Marlin is distracted with the teacher, Mr. Ray, Nemo defiantly sneaks away from the reef toward a speedboat, where he is captured by a pair of scuba divers. Marlin tries to chase the boat and meets Dory, a blue tang who suffers from acute short-term memory loss, who offers her help. During an encounter with three sharks who have sworn to abstain from eating other fish, Marlin notices a diver's mask that fell from the boat that took Nemo. Marlin and Dory fight over the mask, giving Dory a nose bleed, which sends one of the sharks into a feeding frenzy, and Marlin and Dory narrowly escape, but are knocked unconscious when the sharks accidentally set off a ring of old naval mines. Meanwhile, Nemo is placed in an aquarium in a dentist's office in Sydney, Australia, where he meets the Tank Gang, including yellow tang Bubbles, starfish Peach, cleaner shrimp Jacques, blowfish Bloat, royal gramma Gurgle, and damselfish Deb, led by Gill, a Moorish idol. That night, Nemo learns he is to be given to the dentist's young niece, Darla, whose rough treatment has killed most of her previous fish. Gill devises a risky escape plan: Nemo, who can fit inside the aquarium's filter tube, will jam the filter with a pebble, forcing the dentist to put the fish into plastic bags while he cleans the tank, giving them the opportunity to roll out the window and into the harbor. Nemo attempts the maneuver, but fails and is almost killed, leaving Gill guilt-ridden. Marlin and Dory wake up unharmed, but the mask falls into a deep sea trench. Swimming after it, Marlin is chased by an anglerfish, while Dory reads the address and recites it repeatedly to commit it to memory. Dory and Marlin receive directions from a school of moonfish, but Marlin disregards their instructions to take what he believes is a safer route, leading them into a forest of jellyfish where they end up unconscious from all the jellyfish stings. Marlin and Dory wake up to find themselves on the East Australian Current with a group of friendly sea turtles including Crush and his son, Squirt. Marlin tells them about his quest, impressing them, and the story is relayed across the ocean, all the way to the dentist's office, where a pelican named Nigel tells the Tank Gang. Now it's to Marlin and Dory to reach Sydney to get Nemo and bring him home before Darla arrives.

Pros:
1. Marlin, Dory, and Nemo are all very good and well developed protagonists.
2. Lots of great supporting characters like Gill, Bloat, Peach, Bubbles, Gurgle, Deb, Jacques, Nigel, Crush, Bruce, Anchor, and Chum.
3. Plenty of well handled and funny humor.
4. Lots of heartwarming and charming moments.
5. There are some well handled intense moments.
6. Spectacular voice acting.
7. Thomas Newman delivers an amazing and emotional score.
8. Stupendous and glorious animation that really captures the feel of the ocean with well designed characters, well crafted backdrops and settings, and neatly done effects.
9. Stellar development and chemistry between the characters.
10. The story is amazingly well written, and contains a great moral. In fact, the moral is more directed towards adults, which is a unique twist as most animated films have morals geared towards kids.

Cons:
1. It can be cliched at times.

Overall:
What else can i say about this movie that hasn't already be said? It's an animated classic, and a must watch.

Rating:
9.5/10 (Amazing to Perfect)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. The inspiration for Nemo sprang from multiple experiences, going back to director Andrew Stanton's childhood, when he loved going to the dentist to see the fish tank, assuming that the fish were from the ocean and wanted to go home. In 1992, shortly after his son was born, he and his family took a trip to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (which was called Marine World at the time). There, after seeing the shark tube and various exhibits, he felt that the underwater world could be done beautifully in computer animation. Later, in 1997, he took his son for a walk in the park, but realized that he was overprotecting him and lost an opportunity to have a father-son experience that day.
2. In addition, clownfish are colourful, but do not tend to come out of an anemone often. For a character who has to go on a dangerous journey, Stanton felt a clownfish was the perfect type of fish for the character. Pre-production of the film began in early 1997. Stanton began writing the screenplay during the post-production of A Bug's Life. As a result, Finding Nemo began production with a complete screenplay, something that co-director Lee Unkrich called "very unusual for an animated film". The artists took scuba diving lessons to study the coral reef.
3. Stanton originally planned to use flashbacks to reveal how Coral died, but realized that by the end of the film there would be nothing to reveal, deciding to show how she died at the beginning of the movie. The character of Gill also was different from the character seen in the final film. In a scene that was eventually deleted, Gill tells Nemo that he's from a place called Bad Luck Bay and that he has brothers and sisters in order to impress the young clownfish, only for the latter to find out that he was lying by listening to a patient reading a children's storybook that shares exactly the same details.
4. The idea for the initiation sequence came from a story conference between Andrew Stanton and Bob Peterson while they were driving to record the actors. Although he originally envisioned the character of Dory as male, Stanton was inspired to cast Ellen DeGeneres when he watched an episode of Ellen in which he saw her "change the subject five times before finishing one sentence". The pelican character named Gerald (who in the final film ends up swallowing and choking on Marlin and Dory) was originally a friend of Nigel. They were going to play against each other with Nigel being neat and fastidious and Gerald being scruffy and sloppy. The filmmakers could not find an appropriate scene for them that did not slow the pace of the picture, so Gerald's character was minimized.
5. Stanton himself provided the voice of Crush the sea turtle. He originally did the voice for the film's story reel, and assumed they would find an actor later. When Stanton's performance became popular in test screenings, he decided to keep his performance in the film. He recorded all his dialogue while lying on a sofa in Unkrich's office. Crush's son Squirt was voiced by Nicholas Bird, the young son of fellow Pixar director Brad Bird. According to Stanton, the elder Bird was playing a tape recording of his young son around the Pixar studios one day. Stanton felt the voice was "this generation's Thumper" and immediately cast Nicholas.
6. Megan Mullally was originally going to provide a voice in the film. According to Mullally, the producers were dissatisfied to learn that the voice of her character Karen Walker on the television show Will & Grace was not her natural speaking voice. The producers hired her anyway, and then strongly encouraged her to use her Karen Walker voice for the role. When Mullally refused, she was dismissed.
7. To ensure that the movements of the fish in the film were believable, the animators took a crash course in fish biology and oceanography. They visited aquariums, went diving in Hawaii and received in-house lectures from an ichthyologist. As a result, Pixar's animator for Dory, Gini Cruz Santos, integrated "the fish movement, human movement, and facial expressions to make them look and feel like real characters." Production designer Ralph Eggleston created pastel drawings to give the lighting crew led by Sharon Calahan ideas of how every scene in the film should be lit.
8. After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King, Disney re-released Finding Nemo in 3D in 2012.
9. Finding Nemo was released on VHS and DVD in late 2003. The film was then released on both Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray in 2012. It was later released on 4K Blu Ray in 2019.
10. A video game tie-in was released for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, PC, and Game Boy Advance. The GBA version would receive a sequel titled The Continuing Adventures.

Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with the film where a father searches the entire ocean for his son.

Nemo is a young clownfish who lives with his father Marlin in an anemone in the Great Barrier Reef. Nemo, despite being hampered by a lame right fin, is eager to explore life around the ocean. Marlin, however, is overprotective of him, having lost his wife Coral and all their other eggs in a barracuda attack, leaving Nemo as his only child. On Nemo's first day of school, Marlin unintentionally embarrasses him, and while Marlin is distracted with the teacher, Mr. Ray, Nemo defiantly sneaks away from the reef toward a speedboat, where he is captured by a pair of scuba divers. Marlin tries to chase the boat and meets Dory, a blue tang who suffers from acute short-term memory loss, who offers her help. During an encounter with three sharks who have sworn to abstain from eating other fish, Marlin notices a diver's mask that fell from the boat that took Nemo. Marlin and Dory fight over the mask, giving Dory a nose bleed, which sends one of the sharks into a feeding frenzy, and Marlin and Dory narrowly escape, but are knocked unconscious when the sharks accidentally set off a ring of old naval mines. Meanwhile, Nemo is placed in an aquarium in a dentist's office in Sydney, Australia, where he meets the Tank Gang, including yellow tang Bubbles, starfish Peach, cleaner shrimp Jacques, blowfish Bloat, royal gramma Gurgle, and damselfish Deb, led by Gill, a Moorish idol. That night, Nemo learns he is to be given to the dentist's young niece, Darla, whose rough treatment has killed most of her previous fish. Gill devises a risky escape plan: Nemo, who can fit inside the aquarium's filter tube, will jam the filter with a pebble, forcing the dentist to put the fish into plastic bags while he cleans the tank, giving them the opportunity to roll out the window and into the harbor. Nemo attempts the maneuver, but fails and is almost killed, leaving Gill guilt-ridden. Marlin and Dory wake up unharmed, but the mask falls into a deep sea trench. Swimming after it, Marlin is chased by an anglerfish, while Dory reads the address and recites it repeatedly to commit it to memory. Dory and Marlin receive directions from a school of moonfish, but Marlin disregards their instructions to take what he believes is a safer route, leading them into a forest of jellyfish where they end up unconscious from all the jellyfish stings. Marlin and Dory wake up to find themselves on the East Australian Current with a group of friendly sea turtles including Crush and his son, Squirt. Marlin tells them about his quest, impressing them, and the story is relayed across the ocean, all the way to the dentist's office, where a pelican named Nigel tells the Tank Gang. Now it's to Marlin and Dory to reach Sydney to get Nemo and bring him home before Darla arrives.

Pros:
1. Marlin, Dory, and Nemo are all very good and well developed protagonists.
2. Lots of great supporting characters like Gill, Bloat, Peach, Bubbles, Gurgle, Deb, Jacques, Nigel, Crush, Bruce, Anchor, and Chum.
3. Plenty of well handled and funny humor.
4. Lots of heartwarming and charming moments.
5. There are some well handled intense moments.
6. Spectacular voice acting.
7. Thomas Newman delivers an amazing and emotional score.
8. Stupendous and glorious animation that really captures the feel of the ocean with well designed characters, well crafted backdrops and settings, and neatly done effects.
9. Stellar development and chemistry between the characters.
10. The story is amazingly well written, and contains a great moral. In fact, the moral is more directed towards adults, which is a unique twist as most animated films have morals geared towards kids.

Cons:
1. It can be cliched at times.

Overall:
What else can i say about this movie that hasn't already be said? It's an animated classic, and a must watch.

Rating:
9.5/10 (Amazing to Perfect)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. The inspiration for Nemo sprang from multiple experiences, going back to director Andrew Stanton's childhood, when he loved going to the dentist to see the fish tank, assuming that the fish were from the ocean and wanted to go home. In 1992, shortly after his son was born, he and his family took a trip to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom (which was called Marine World at the time). There, after seeing the shark tube and various exhibits, he felt that the underwater world could be done beautifully in computer animation. Later, in 1997, he took his son for a walk in the park, but realized that he was overprotecting him and lost an opportunity to have a father-son experience that day.
2. In addition, clownfish are colourful, but do not tend to come out of an anemone often. For a character who has to go on a dangerous journey, Stanton felt a clownfish was the perfect type of fish for the character. Pre-production of the film began in early 1997. Stanton began writing the screenplay during the post-production of A Bug's Life. As a result, Finding Nemo began production with a complete screenplay, something that co-director Lee Unkrich called "very unusual for an animated film". The artists took scuba diving lessons to study the coral reef.
3. Stanton originally planned to use flashbacks to reveal how Coral died, but realized that by the end of the film there would be nothing to reveal, deciding to show how she died at the beginning of the movie. The character of Gill also was different from the character seen in the final film. In a scene that was eventually deleted, Gill tells Nemo that he's from a place called Bad Luck Bay and that he has brothers and sisters in order to impress the young clownfish, only for the latter to find out that he was lying by listening to a patient reading a children's storybook that shares exactly the same details.
4. The idea for the initiation sequence came from a story conference between Andrew Stanton and Bob Peterson while they were driving to record the actors. Although he originally envisioned the character of Dory as male, Stanton was inspired to cast Ellen DeGeneres when he watched an episode of Ellen in which he saw her "change the subject five times before finishing one sentence". The pelican character named Gerald (who in the final film ends up swallowing and choking on Marlin and Dory) was originally a friend of Nigel. They were going to play against each other with Nigel being neat and fastidious and Gerald being scruffy and sloppy. The filmmakers could not find an appropriate scene for them that did not slow the pace of the picture, so Gerald's character was minimized.
5. Stanton himself provided the voice of Crush the sea turtle. He originally did the voice for the film's story reel, and assumed they would find an actor later. When Stanton's performance became popular in test screenings, he decided to keep his performance in the film. He recorded all his dialogue while lying on a sofa in Unkrich's office. Crush's son Squirt was voiced by Nicholas Bird, the young son of fellow Pixar director Brad Bird. According to Stanton, the elder Bird was playing a tape recording of his young son around the Pixar studios one day. Stanton felt the voice was "this generation's Thumper" and immediately cast Nicholas.
6. Megan Mullally was originally going to provide a voice in the film. According to Mullally, the producers were dissatisfied to learn that the voice of her character Karen Walker on the television show Will & Grace was not her natural speaking voice. The producers hired her anyway, and then strongly encouraged her to use her Karen Walker voice for the role. When Mullally refused, she was dismissed.
7. To ensure that the movements of the fish in the film were believable, the animators took a crash course in fish biology and oceanography. They visited aquariums, went diving in Hawaii and received in-house lectures from an ichthyologist. As a result, Pixar's animator for Dory, Gini Cruz Santos, integrated "the fish movement, human movement, and facial expressions to make them look and feel like real characters." Production designer Ralph Eggleston created pastel drawings to give the lighting crew led by Sharon Calahan ideas of how every scene in the film should be lit.
8. After the success of the 3D re-release of The Lion King, Disney re-released Finding Nemo in 3D in 2012.
9. Finding Nemo was released on VHS and DVD in late 2003. The film was then released on both Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray in 2012. It was later released on 4K Blu Ray in 2019.
10. A video game tie-in was released for PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, PC, and Game Boy Advance. The GBA version would receive a sequel titled The Continuing Adventures.