Finding Nemo 3D

For those who came in late, Finding Nemo (Alexander Gould) is the story of Marlin (Albert Brooks) – Nemo’s father – who is a single father of a single fish thanks to a shark attack that leaves only one egg and takes Nemo’s mother away. He is over protective about Nemo to the point of suffocation. But on the 1st day of school, it takes a silly challenge for Nemo to leave his natural habitat and swim out into the open sea. His excitement is short lived thanks to P Sherman who lives @ 42 Wallaby Way in Sydney. He is a dentist who is on a diving trip and promptly picks up the clown fish for his monster niece – Darla.

Marlin isn’t one to give up easily. He decides to chase after Nemo. He meets a the forgetful Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) who offers to help in his search. And the adventure takes you from the Great Barrier Reef – Nemo’s habitat – all the way to Sydney. En Route they make friends with 3 “Vegetarian” Sharks, some really old turtles, ride the East Australian Current aka the EAC and manage to spend sometime inside a whale. All in a day’s work for the typical Aussie I am quite certain .

Nemo, in the meantime, finds himself in a fish tank with 5 other fish who are characters in themselves. Together, under the passionate leadership of Gill (Willem Dafoe), they hatch a daring plot to escape from the tank and more importantly save themselves from the deadly Darla.

Finding Nemo is the kind of movie that makes your scream out at the Academy and demand that voice overs should be nominated along with regular actors and actresses for mainstream awards. Performances from Willem Dafoe and Ellen DeGeneres will leave you spell bound to say the least. Finding Nemo is the kind of movie that should have made it to the Best Movie category in 2004 and I can only say that it is a travesty that animation is not treated at par with regular feature film.

Andrew Stanton must be an extremely talented person. Not only has he co-directed what is arguably in the top 5 animation movies of all time but he also lends his voice to one of the characters – Crush. Dig a bit deeper and you will find that this is the 6th time he is doing the voice over in a mainstream animation movie and has been part of quite a few good ones. Finding Nemo – undoubtedly – was and will probably be his best attempt. Because, in my books, there can only be 2 movies better – The Lion King and Jungle Book. Emulating them in itself would be asking too much from Stanton leave along beating them.

When Finding Nemo released a couple of weeks back – or should I say re-released in 3D – I was quite certain to be in line for the tickets. Took me till the Sunday of release to get around to finally watching it unfortunately. Now while the movie in itself was and has been an 8.5 on 10 in my books for nearly the decade since its release, I must say that the technology used in movie houses in India probably did not do justice to the 3D version. It is a damp squib at best. The saving grace is that the movie on its own will keep you riveted to the screen. Watchable – Now and Forever

Watch the trailer on http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2687214105/