Andrew Stanton’s Find­ing Nemo imme­di­ately pre­ceded Pixar’s slightly more sophis­ti­cated col­lab­o­ra­tions with direc­tor Brad Bird, The Incred­i­bles and Rata­touille. Despite being one of Pixar’s most kid-friendly films, Find­ing Nemo is para­dox­i­cally full of death and anx­i­ety. But Stan­ton works in the proven tra­di­tion of its spir­i­tual ances­tor Bambi, which also famously fea­tures a mother’s arbi­trary mur­der in its open­ing moments. Stan­ton keeps Find­ing Nemo child­like with­out being childish.

If I was stranded in a dentist’s office aquar­ium, and I could take only one of Stanton’s Pixar movies with me, I’m afraid I wouldn’t pick Find­ing Nemo. I found his follow-up WALL-E (read The Dork Report review) to be a more sophis­ti­cated film that relies less on dia­log and celebrity personae.

Offi­cial movie site: www.pixar.com/featurefilms/nemo/

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

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