Finding Nemo
Sydney is really beautiful (obligatory Melbnian comment: yeah but it’s expensive and the people aren’t as nice). A stylised computer-animated utopian Sydney is stunning. Fish are really pretty. Stylised computer-animated utopian fish are stunning. Put those two together and run it through Pixar, and no matter what happens in the plot, it’s gonna be a pretty good film.
The plot was a pretty standard overprotective parent loses son and stops at nothing to find him. Both the dad and the son end up better people at the end. Yay (Aside: Why do all Pixar films so far feature single parents?). Nothing special there. There’s a bit of a buddy film happening as well, because the dad meets up with another fish who travels around with him. She’s got a very funny short term memory loss issue (you’d almost think she should start tattooing phrases on her body).
Some of the glimpses into fishlife and birdlife are hugely funny – one of my favourites is the seagull. They only can say one word, and it’s not “please”. All the same, the personalities seemed very Disney and one-dimensional. I can’t believe I’m going to write this, but Buzz Lightyear was a complex character compared to some of them in this film. They weren’t as interesting as some of Pixar’s other characters, they didn’t seem as “real” – the bad guys were bad, the good guys were good, and that was that.
Saying something like “the worst of the Pixar films” is a bit misleading. That’s like saying “the worst flavour of Toblerone”. It doesn’t measure up to either of the Toy Stories or A Bug’s Life , but it’s still better than most of the other crap in the theatres.
Before the film, they showed a Pixar Short, as tradition seems to dictate. It was an old one, Knick-Knack . One of my favorites, and a very good soundtrack, but it would have been good to see something new. But something wasn’t right. Something was missing. I’m almost certain.
Really quickly, it’s a film about a frustrated snowman knickknack trying to get out of his snowglobe prison and seduce the beautiful mermaid knickknack. Problem is, in this remixed and Disnified version, the poor mermaid has had a mastectomy! If memory serves, in the original, she had a massively ridiculous set of boobies, and now they’re gone. Pixar has re-rendered the short and removed the tits. Gone! What, are cartoon breasts not allowed in Disney movies?