Finding Nemo 3D (Brockway)

Tropic Sprockets
 by Ian Brockway

 Finding Nemo 3D

The 3D version of "Finding Nemo" has arrived at The Tropic and it seems like Christmas in October. Nemo (Alexander Gould) has never looked better; he's just as orange and glowing as you would expect. And he has been given a new crystal clear life, courtesy of Pixar's virtuosic 3D effects. "Finding Nemo" is nothing less than a smile on the water and with its diverse and lively characters that roll across your eyes like music, the story unfolds like an aquatic "West Side Story".

 Other than Nemo, the inimitable Ellen DeGeneres is here as Dory, an angelfish with ADD. Not to mention Albert Brooks as Nemo's neurotic and fussy clownfish father. And who can forget the scheming aquarium fish Gill, voiced by Willem Dafoe who comes across as a New York cabbie. The action and laughs are non-stop and the visuals have such a painterly yet sharper than sharp quality, that we actually feel we are deep under the water. Objects rise up in liquid ferocity, while others recede in a wavy chiaroscuro. This is nothing less than a maritime Dali painting overlaid with transparencies by Disney. Never has human anthropomorphism---a usually annoying convention--- been so unabashedly earnest or as classy.

"Nemo" makes the sentimental sophisticated. Nemo is lost, helpless under the sway of human intervention and ignorance and his father vows to find him. The jokes are at least at a rate of one a minute and they are frequently irreverent and always on point with frequent jabs at the lack of human interest regarding conservation. My favorite segments are the dentist office scenes. Both the inhabitants of the aquarium and the pelicans seem to have more knowledge of dentistry and a cosmopolitan grasp of events than the bourgeois dentist.

One by one, species by species, the fish and birds relate the story of the clownfish father looking for his son. Each creature makes their own Homeric story and you get the feeling that it is these creatures and not the shallow humans who matter in this world. This revelation is the film's most iconoclastic and honest gift and it deserves praise. Please delve into "Finding Nemo" if you haven't already seen it once before. As a complete film experience it rivals the pop culture of the Beatles' film "Yellow Submarine" and Disney's epic "Fantasia". Associations aside, it is also simple swimming fun. Write

Ian at redtv_2005@yahoo.com