Finding Nemo
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This entry was posted at
23:59 GMT on 10 June 2003
I saw it, I laughed, and I so wanted to love it. Instead, I merely liked it.
The writing was sharp, the characters well drawn, the voice casting perfect. My main issue was with pacing, on which more in a mo'.
The story is good, and the premise intriguing. I mean, if a fish is kidnapped and kept in a fish tank in the human world, what hope has he of ever escaping/getting rescued? That alone, plus the promise of Pixar, got me into the theater.
From the point of the kidnapping, it becomes a bit of a fishy Odyssey, with Albert Brooks's Marlin, the father, as Odysseus, his son Nemo as Penelope (without the, you know, marriage part), and Ellen Degeneres's Dory as the Holy Fool. The quest is to rescue the son, after a long, arduous, apparently impossible journey. You know all this, though.
Being a quest, Marlin and Dory travel many strange places, and meet unusual fishes. Then they get within sight of their goal, and things really begin to move...
Well, no, actually, that's my complaint. Things really move all through the film. The whole thing is paced like a whipcrack, rarely slowing down to take a breath or let a punchline sink in or a character moment have its effect.
The whole time, I was wishing really hard that John Lasseter had exercised a little more control in his producer role, because the films he directs show such masterful timing with regard to both jokes and characters. Go back and watch the gas station scene in Toy Story, when Woody tries to convince Buzz that he's a toy. The rhythm to that scene, the pauses, the silences, it's just perfect. Or in Monsters, Inc., when Sully finds the active portal and, eventually, first meets Boo.
There are scenes in Nemo with the same potential but, man, as Gershwin might say, they got no rhythm! The material's all there, but the timing just didn't work for me. The entire film, on a scene by scene basis, felt rushed and cut off, so that while I met lots of interesting characters, I don't really feel I know any of them very well.
The movie doesn't need to be one second longer. It just needs more variation in the pacing and rhythm of the editing.
Now, that said, there was great stuff in this movie.
There are four bits that I loved above all others, though there was much to choose from. First off, the character of Krush, the sea turtle. Usually surfer dudes irritate me. Krush I loved from the moment he appeared.
A co-worker claimed that Dory's first attempt at "speaking whale" was the point that he started laughing so hard he was crying. It certainly qualifies as a gut-buster.
The montage showing how the rumor of Marlin's quest travelled and grew in the telling was excellent, especially in the payoff.
And once you find out what the fish in a tank in a dentist's office do to pass their time, you will know how much thought went into this script. It's absolutely wonderful.
I seem to be the only one with these reservations, though. Craig Ceely at The Anger of Compassion liked it, and Will Duquette loved it. So I'm probably being picky.
And yes, though I laughed a lot, I admit that I watched it in a foul mood, which very well could have colored my reaction.