Finding Nemo [2-Disc Collector's Edition]

John,

Thank goodness that you rated the movie substantially less than a 9 or a 10. I was really bored by "Finding Nemo". I saw "The Italian Job" (2003) on the same day and had more fun with that movie than with this one. By far, "Nemo" is the least of Pixar's efforts.

This is really the most important issue concerning "Nemo": "While I thought the animation was fantastic, I didn't think the plot or the characters were particularly well developed..."

I appreciate the fact that your review mentions that the best family films appeal to children and adults alike, especially ones that work on multiple levels.

Those seagulls annoyed me, too. One or two "MINE! MINE!" scenes would've been more than enough, but the gag is dragged through the entire movie. The same thing goes with the surfer-dude turtles. After two minutes, I got the point, but the sequence lasted for quite a while.

"Nemo" is only about 90 minutes, but it should've been chopped in half. It's pacing is really off, and it's really slow.

I'm at the point where I'm fed up with Americans thinking that animation is for kids. Just the other day, I got into an argument with my classmates in school about "Nemo". They all loved it and said, "But it's sooooo cute." I said, "So what? It's still not a superlative film." "Pearl Harbor" had a cute love story, but it was awful filmmaking.

Just look at what the Japanese are doing, and you can see that the problem with American animation isn't the hand-drawn 2-D versus the computer-generated 3-D issue--it's the reductionistic/simplistic attitude of people making animation (i.e. the people who write garbage scripts) that is hurting American animation.

Eddie

I thought Nemo was . . . adorable. I will agree it does not have the memorable characters we???ve seen in other Pixar films, and even the comedy is a bit weak. However, I found it as entertaining as any other animated picture I???ve seen in recent years. The story moved along in a smooth pace, it had a lot of heart and it was beautiful to look at. Best of all it had absolutely no singing! Overall, it is the perfect family picture of 2004. It may not tell its story with the brilliance of Toy Story 1 or 2, but it does manage to tell a delightful, heart warming tale.

What was even more entertainment for me was taking my 11 year-old daughter to see Nemo. There truly is nothing more memorable than watching your own kid laugh and enjoy every moment of a wonderful picture. It is true that watching Nemo with my daughter helped me to enjoy it even more; thus the reason I found it very entertaining. To me it is more the cherished memories of taking my kid to the movies that stand out. I???ll always enjoy Nemo because it reminds me of a fond experience that only a parent can feel. Besides, I only have a couple years left before she???s a teen and all hell breaks loose.

Okay, I know I'm going against popular opinion, but here it goes: "Finding Nemo" is quite possibly the most overrated movie ever made. I'm a Sophmore in High School, and on the last day before Christmas vacation we watched movies in nearly every class. And guess which movie I had to watch in every class but one? "Finding Nemo." And guess which movie the kids want to watch every time while I do babysitting? "Finding Nemo." When you ask almost anyone what their favorite Disney movie is what do 7 or 8 out of 10 say? You guessed it. My Mom recently brought the children I babysat a stuffed Simba fromThe Lion King" and they didn't even know who Simba was. I couldn't believe it.
I honestly think that the Disney company has lost their soul by starting to make completely CGI movies. "Toy Story" 1 and 2 were pretty good, but not great, and everything else that followed was kind of lame. While "Finding Nemo" has beautiful animation and cute funny moments, the plot and characters are not very developed or special at all. It used to be that Disney films were huge events that were almost garunteed to be good. "Lion King" and "fantasia" are among my favorite Disney movies, and they truly just don't make them like they used to. I also love the animated movies "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "American Tail" 1 and 2 and "Aladdin" but "Finding Nemo" not special at all yet everyone I know absolutely loves it. The only saving grace was the surfer turtles, they were hilarious. Parts of the movie were funny, but "Finding Nemo" to me was definetly not a landmark Disney movie. I wish Disney would do some REAL animation and not all that CGI stuff. I love CGI in some movies, like "The Matrix" and it's sequels but after movies like "The Matrix" every movie ripped it off and people got sick of it. I thought children's movies and Disney would be spared from this CGI fad, but I was utterly wrong. The overuse of CGI really bothers me, and that's why I like good old-fashioned animation. Plus, films that boast that they don't use much CGI like the fantastic films "The Last Samurai" and "Gangs of New York" are generaaly more successful and produce a buzz throughout Hollywood. It's considered brave not to use CGI so why don't more films do it? Since "Finding Nemo" came out, most people have forgotten other animation classics like "The Lion King"(my favorite Disney movie ever, it was funny, moving, compelling, great music, almost flawless) and "Fantasia"(probably the most creative animation movie ever) and "Shrek"(best total CGI animation movie and 100 times more funny than Finding Nemo).
It may seem like I'm whining, but I know there are many people who agree with me. If I want CGI, I'll watch "The Matrix/Reloaded/Revolutions" and I'll be more entertained and intellectually challenged. I will never understand the obsession most people have with this movie. I wish that the Pixar/Disney collaborations would quit. But they won't because films like Nemo are so successful all the time. Maybe I'm just wrong on this one, but does anyone else share my opinion? :@ :@

TGP, no offense, and yes you are entitled to you opinion but may I say your supporting points on why you dislike films like Finding Nemo is about as strong as a house of cards.

TGP,

It appears that at least two us at DVD Town, Eddie and I, share most of your opinions. We found "Nemo" beautiful to look at but less than thrilling in its story and characters. To each his own, however, and there is no denying the movie has a strong following. We wish it well.

John

"Nemo" was extremely simplistic, and its jokes were shallow (the seagulls are funny once). However, families love this one because it's not crude, so you can certainly count on more of the same. It's horrendous because there are much better family movies out there (like the version of "The Secret Garden" that Francis Ford Coppola produced).

Oh BTW the comment above was by me, and for the record, this is what I think of Finding Nemo:

Visually stunnning (so much so that it's easy to forgot this is all CGI - you just don't see it the same way as say the Super Burly Brawl in Revolutions), sometimes shallow, sometimes funny, sometimes boring. Definitely not as fun as Pixar's previous efforts (although I didn't care much for A Bug's Life either), I don't consider is a horrible movie. Just maybe average or slightly above average animated feature. If I had to rate it, I'd give it a 7 or an 8.

I don'y believe that CGI is evil or silly, as I said before it has been perfectly utilized in many movies. However, CGI is definetly overused. When was the last time you saw a recent movie that didn't have loads and loads of totally fake effects? Just look at "The Fast and the Furious" or any other movie that resembles it. CGI is best used when you don't even notice it's there. Think of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" in which the animated characters were so seamlessly edited into the live-action film that you could believe that they were real characters. This movie is kind of old, but I believe that "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" probably utilized CGI and special effects better than any other film. While the T-100 was CGI, most of the other effects were not. The bullet holes in the T-1000, the giant mechanical ships during the war and all the stunts involving trucks, helicopters and explosions were real. Of course than 2003 yielded "Terminator 3" which ruined everything that was special about the first 2, like the "guerilla filmaking". "Finding Nemo" is completely CGI so nothing except the voices is real. And what I said before about the Matrix and it's sequels was also misinterpreted: "The Matrix"and it's sequels after all the hype,are still just a movies. They are not the Bible or the Quran or anything, but while they are live-action movies completely pumped with CGI, the story or characters and exposition do not suffer from the use of it (in my opinion). "Revolutions" had parts of uneven pacing and convoluted plot threads (the conversation with the Architect in "Reloaded" was a doozy and took me 3 viewings to fully understand it) but "The Matrix" series is something that is more than the sum of it's parts. If you watched the whole trilogy together it would provide (at least for me) a very compelling, interesting and thought-provoking entertainment experience. While "Finding Nemo" is definetly a beautiful movie and far from being Disney's worst movie it just didn't have anything that made it special enough to receive all the critical praise and award nominations and phenomenal following. But hey, if you or anyone else love the movie, go ahead and enjoy it. Critics are only meant to give advice, not to persuade someone into going or not going to see a movie. I just hope that real animation, hand-drawn does not become forgotten in the future of film. I'm sorry if I seem like too much of a purist and I'm also sorry for going off on tangents about other movies but I'm trying to clarify my other review. Thanks for reading! ;)

P.S. The other Disney phenemenon of 2003, "Pirates of the Caribbean" was excellent and I think deserved all the praise it got. Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow was just incredible. In that case, CGI was used but not overused because it looked real and flowed smoothly with the live-action segments. 8)

Weird, from the comments I though John rated this a 5 or less in film value. I think 7 is about right. I mean, I was entertained (except for the turtles), and I really loved the sea gulls. What can I say, I've spent a lot of time in or near the Gulf of Mexico, and those sky rats are everywhere. My friends and I always imagined that the gulls were just mindlessly babbling, so to have them do so in the film was great.

That aside, it was 90 minutes and that was long enough. Maybe a little too long.

Interestingly, I agree with both Eddie and YCH. On the one hand, American animation could use some more adult-oriented material, but like YCH wrote, it's not like everything has to be "Neon Genesis Evangelion". There is a place for animation that is just for kids, just as there's a place for live action films that are aimed squarely at kids. You don't really think your parents enjoyed all the movies they showed you growing up do you?

Besides, Eddie, anime is littered with really stupid, inane, vapid crap. I would dare say that the bad, taken together, is equal or greater than in volume to the good produced across all genres in any given season. We have a slightly skewed view of it because almost none of the garbage is released domestically, by either professional distributors or the fansub community.

Pixar's best effort, no. A decent rental, yes.

Well, considering that we, Europeans get to see DVDs much later than our American friends and I still have not seen the film, my opinion is no good. Yet, I had a strong instinct that spending 5 Euro on it in the theater would be a waste. Well, what do you know.