Finding Nemo has a very violent start. Marlin is a delightful orange and white coral reef clown fish whose life is destroyed when his wife and 399 eggs are killed by barracudas. Marlin is knocked out in the fray. When he comes to, the camera zooms in on his cute orange fish face as Marlin realizes the magnitude of his loss. I kept telling myself, it's a fish, it's a cartoon, to stop the tears welling up in my eyes.

Marlin is left with one little egg, which he promises to protect forever. The egg hatches to be Nemo who soon grows tired of his Dad's over-protectiveness. Desperate to try a little freedom, Nemo ventures into the open ocean and is captured by a Sydney dentist who takes him back to live in the tank in his surgery. Marlin is devastated and determines to find Nemo. En route he bumps into Dory, magnificently voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. Dory offers to help Marlin find the boat that captured Nemo and the two set off. But Dory has short-term memory loss and she soon forgets her mission and instead wonders why Marlin is following her.

Finding Nemo is a completely and absolutely adorable movie. The animation is superb. The story is wonderful, if a little violent. The plethora of kids around me mostly seemed to eat it up, but man; a few times I was really scared, so I'd be concerned about nightmares for very sensitive kids.

If I didn't adore this movie already, I likely would have, since it's set in Sydney. Although it's quite a hike from the Coral Reef to Sydney. There are some great Australian voices that are fun to spot. Barry Humphries--a.k.a. Dame Edna--voices Bruce, the shark who leads the program for sharks who want fish to be friends not food. Bill Hunter is the dentist and Geoffrey Rush is Nigel the pelican who connects Marlin and Dory to the dentist's office.

I love this movie up one side and down the other. The visuals are stunning; the voices are pure genius. And the timing seems perfect, right before father's day in the U.S., we have a movie where a dad will go to any lengths to find his son. Finding Nemo is a must see movie


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