The family.

by Karissa Barrows, Editor

I have a special place in my heart for Finding Nemo.  If you’ve ever seen my two-year-old son watch the movie, you’ll know why.  Besides being a work of genius, and one of the more heartwarming Pixar movies for parent viewers, it’s also one of the funniest Pixar movies, in my humble opinion.  Which counts for a lot, considering I’ve watched it about a million times with Seth and it’s still laugh-inducing.  When I heard the movie was being re-released in 3-D, I absolutely had to go, and took that little man with me.

If you’ve been living under a rock since the movie was first released in 2003 (incidentally the year I graduated from high school), the movie is about a clown fish named Marlin (Albert Brooks – Taxi Driver, The Muse, The Simpsons), emotionally scarred by the sudden death of 399 of his in-egg children and wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins – The Flintstones, 28 Days, Weeds), who painfully shelters his remaining offspring, Nemo (Alexander Gould – How To Eat Fried Worms, Supernatural, Weeds).  Nemo, in defiance of his overprotective father, swims out into the open water on his first day of school to go and touch the “butt” (boat).  (To which my son points, during the movie, and says, “Oh!  Issa BOAT.”)  That’s when two divers, one of which is an eccentric dentist from Sydney (Bill Hunter – Muriel’s Wedding, All Saints, Kangaroo Jack), take Nemo and return to the Australian mainland, with the spasmodic Marlin chasing after them as fast as his fins can take him.

Some of Nemo’s new roommates.

Marlin meets Dory (Ellen DeGeneres – Coneheads, Ellen, The Ellen Show), a Pacific Blue Tang suffering short-term memory loss, who begins to lead him through an adventure to find Nemo, encountering three fish-addicted sharks in recovery, a bale of laid back sea turtles surfing the East Australian Current, and a fish-friendly pelican named Nigel (Geoffrey Rush – Les Miserables, House on Haunted Hill, Pirates of the Caribbean).  I won’t spoil the ending if you’re one of the very few people who haven’t seen it, but it’s lovely.

In which Nigel takes Marlin and Dory out of reach of the “rats with wings.”

I don’t care if you’re 5, 15, 25, or 45 – Finding Nemo is a movie all ages can enjoy.  It’s something that Pixar does extremely well, making a movie all ages will love, which is what brings families to the theaters in droves whenever the Disney-owned company releases something new.  Even their sequels (which, by the way… there is a rumor going around that a sequel to Finding Nemo in the works) are fantastic!  Cars 2 was great, almost better than the original, this upcoming Planes movie is going to be awesome, and if there is indeed a Finding Nemo 2, you can bet my son and I will be there on opening day.

“Happy feelings gone…“

So enough about the movie itself.  Let’s discuss 3-D.  First of all, because I’m a fool, I didn’t see Finding Nemo in the theater when it first came out (I was busy graduating or something).  We also don’t have the movie on Blu-ray (only on DVD), so I’ve never seen the amazing graphics this movie has to offer.  Transfer the movie beautifully into a 3-D format, and you can see every little scale and light fluctuation and infinitesimal speck (thanks Mr. Ray (Bob Peterson – pretty much every Pixar movie ever made, as he’s a Pixar writer) for the lesson on protozoa) and hair and every little detail the Pixar animators worked so diligently to include in the movie right in your face.  I found myself marveling at it throughout the movie, and it’s not often I sit and marvel at something like that, at least in small detail.

Time for school, time for school, time for school!

Moral of the story?  Take your kids.  Take your parents.  Take your friends.  Take yourself!  Go and enjoy the movie on the big screen before you miss your chance.  Detail onPlanes is sure to be amazing, but there’s something about seeing the ocean like that…

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