Finding Nemo
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Plot Summary:
Marlin goes on a quest to rescue his son Nemo from a fish tank in Australia, learning some important life lessons on the way. Much fishiness ensues...Opinion/Analysis:
[Note: this differs from my normal structure, due to (a) having no objectionable content to analyze, and (b) not really needing to avoid 'spoilers' with "Nemo" by dividing the analysis into two sections...]I realize I am entirely alone in my opinion that "Finding Nemo" is not a very good movie, easily Pixar's weakest effort to date. (Well…not entirely alone: "UK Critic" Ian Waldron-Mantgani agrees with me...although his review is no longer online)
That's okay: it's not the first time and it won't be the last. What matters is whether I can defend my opinion adequately, so here goes...
"Finding Nemo", in contrast to Pixar's usually high standards of quality, falls short in virtually every area in which its predecessors succeeded: plot, humor, pacing, and even memorable lines. The vast amounts of critical and public praise heaped upon this movie frankly leave me astonished. I mean, have they seen either of the Toy Story movies?
Artistically, the movie is without peer. For those who really get into the ‘animation’ of animated movies, you won’t have any cause for complaint—the computer animation is perfect, with each character and underwater environment being a triumph in art direction and design. One of my co-workers (a 3D graphics expert) just loved the movie specifically for this reason (“Wow! Excellent use of bump mapping there...”).
Well, okay, then... If you can enjoy it entirely on that level, more power to you.
For me, the animation techniques in an animated movie are like lyrics to a song—they need to be done well enough so they don’t distract from the overall quality, but can’t carry the song (or movie) on their own. It needs something else backing it up in the music to be worthwhile—just like a movie, no matter how high the production quality, needs an underlying story and plot.
Let's discuss the shortcomings of Finding Nemo in detail:
Finding Nemo, like the previous four Pixar films, is primarily a comedy--scenes and dialogue are designed specifically for the purpose of garnering laughs. Now, obviously a movie does not have to be funny to be successful—lots of good movies have absolutely no laughs at all. The problem here is, unlike the other Pixar movies, the comedic situations in “Nemo” (a) don’t advance the plot, but rather drag the story to a standstill, and (b) rarely rise above what we’ll call ‘Level One’ humor--that is, the basic premise of each comedic situation has one joke and one joke only, and never expands upon the that initial comedic premise for anything more.
Example 1: Marlin and Dory hitch a ride with a pack of turtles. The joke: the turtles all talk in 'surfer-speak'. The problem is: that's all that entire scene has to give--every line of dialogue in the entire sequence has just that one basic surfer-talk joke, which you might find moderately amusing the first time but it's doubtful you’ll really find that "ha-ha" funny. That makes the sequence somewhat redundant after a while, because it doesn’t have anything else to offer.
Example 2: Marlin and Dory meet with a group of sharks. The joke: the sharks are sworn vegetarians and have banded together in the meat-eaters equivalent of an AA support group. Marlin and Dory talk with them for quite a few minutes, but again every joke in this scene is just another version of the same thing--the naturally meat-eating sharks are now vegetarians. Again, scenes don't have to funny, but if it has no other purpose than to be funny, and doesn't advance the story either--then it becomes a waste of time. (For comparison, the other 2003 summer blockbuster, "Pirates of the Caribbean" is not really a comedy, yet has more laughs than "Nemo"--and doesn't take tangents from the main story to do it, either...)
Level One humor is only effective if the initial premise is humorous to begin with. You may find the idea of surfer-talking turtles 'cute' or even 'amusing'--but it's not really 'laugh-out-loud' funny, and thus an entire scene of turtles saying 'Cool!' and "Dude!" has very limited comic potential since the screenwriters didn’t try to do anything else.
The character of Dory--Marlin's companion who suffers from short-term memory loss--is, in fact, a funny character (albeit still a one joke one). The problem with her is actually that she's underused--her one joke (short term memory loss) has a lot of comic potential and it's not used as effectively as it could have been.
Unfortunately, some of her screen time that could have been used for more humorous escapades, the screenwriters spend it, instead:
(1) having her give a heartfelt emotional confession to Marlin, which rings false because it comes out of nowhere and without any evidence from elsewhere in the movie for any of the things she said being true.
(2) having her give multiple short speeches about Marlin letting Nemo have more freedom (one of the primary themes of the movie)--which is fine the first time we hear it, but we hear the
exact same speech again later and it becomes redundant.
Plotwise, when Marlin and Dory are not on the screen, the movie doesn’t seem to know what to do—and ends up wasting
more time. Virtually all the scenes with Nemo in the fish tank with the other exotic fish fall into this category. I don’t understand what the purpose of these scenes are… They aren't funny, none of the other fish have any significant purposes within the story, and Nemo himself doesn't really develop as a character here, either.
What the filmmakers seemed to want to do, is create a situation where Nemo—no longer with his ‘domineering’ father--gets a chance to be more independent. The black fish--voiced by Willem Dafoe--seems to be there to be the substitute 'father figure' for Nemo—someone who lets Nemo do anything he wants, in contrast to his real father. The progression of events would then allow Nemo
to accept his new 'father', enjoy his independance, and then, perhaps, to realize through his experiences in the tank (such as his adventure putting the small rock in the filter motor) that perhaps his father was right in being a little more conservative and that being able to do ‘anything you want’ without bounds can be dangerous and self-destructive. This would have fit in nicely with his father simultaneously learning to give Nemo
more freedom and to grow up on his own, giving both father and son a
significant character arc. Alas, as composed, the scenes in the fish tank
are preoccupied with the unimportant escape attempt, with only bare traces
of this character progression. As written, what purpose does the black fish
serve (he’s not the least bit funny, and the potential idea of being a substitute father figure doesn’t develop either…). What does Nemo learn, if anything, from his time in the fish tank? A waste of time, it seems to me…
Finally, let's talk about the finale. Remember the finales from the Toy Story movies--the race to catch the moving van in the first, and the airport baggage ride and race to escape the airplane in the second? Remember the chase scene in the giant warehouse with all the doors in
"Monsters Inc"? Those were finales...filled with genuine energy, excitement, danger, and no small amount of creativity.
What does Nemo have to offer? Well...not much. The movie actually sets up a massively chaotic finale, involving the final escape attempt, the dentist’s psychotic niece, and the pelicans, all colliding in a burst of fast-paced action. What happens, though? The niece shows up (with "Psycho" music, a clever gag), chaos starts to happen, and then thirty seconds later, Nemo goes down the toilet and the whole scene is over.
And then...the movie goes on for fifteen more minutes, without anything
significant happening afterwards. (Nemo rescuing fish from a fishing net isn’t really much of a ‘finale’ is it? Can you really say it is as fulfilling or creative a finale as any of the previous Pixar movies? I see it as pretty anti-climatic…)
I’m not discounting the message behind the movie—it’s real and worthwhile. I have a young son myself, and I know it’s hard to strike a balance between letting him be independent and experience things on his own, while trying to protect and teach him at the same time. The problem isn’t the motive, just the execution. The seeds for a good movie are all there—Nemo just needed one or two more rewrites. Everyone should have sat down and gone through scene by scene and discussed, “Why does this scene exist? Just for laughs? To advance the plot? To play into the father/son theme of the movie?” Then you ask, “How does this scene (or character) fulfill that purpose?” If you can’t satisfactorily answer that question, then you either rewrite or cut the scene.
I don’t like ripping on a movie that everyone else seems to adore (especially one with cute fish in it. I mean, who
doesn’t like movies with cute animated fish?), but I have to call it as I see it. I was
unfortunately bored throughout the entire running time of “Nemo”, and—even worse—saw the potential it had to be a great movie, but fall short. Oh, well…I’ll just
have to stick with “Toy Story 2” and
“The Incredibles”, instead…
Random Notes & Comments:
(1) There was a small controversy surrounding the choice of Ellen DeGeneres to voice Dory, her being a ‘practicing’ lesbian. This is remarkably silly, even for the far-right… There’s nothing in Dory’s dialogue that could be interpreted to be promoting the ‘gay agenda’, and if the objection is simply that a lesbian is even participating in a 'family movie', I'd like to know if they spent any time doing background checks on Albert Brooks, Willem Dafoe, or any of the other voices in the movie to see whether they are all morally ‘spotless’ or not. You either demand all the actors be outstanding moral characters in the sight of God, or none--don't judge one by different standards than the others...(2) I watched “Nemo” the first time in a theater with kids. When the movie stopped keeping my interest I spend a little bit of time watching the kids watching the movie instead. It didn’t look like very many of them were ‘entranced’—nor did any of them laugh much. None of them talked about the movie excitedly after it was over either. Kind of a weird experience… I’ve often wondered about if/how the context of watching a movie (where you are, who you are with) affects your opinion of the movie, and in what way. Perhaps an essay topic for another time…
(3) I watched “Nemo” a second time before posting the final draft of this analysis. Nope...still dull. My 17-month-old son found it interesting, though—although a DVD of animated fish reading names out of the phone book would probably have also held his interest...
