Finding Nemo

All you want to know about Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo

Original theatrical poster
Directed by Andrew Stanton
Lee Unkrich (co-director)
Produced by Graham Walters
Written by Story:
Andrew Stanton
Screenplay:
Andrew Stanton
Bob Peterson
David Reynolds
Starring Albert Brooks
Ellen DeGeneres
Alexander Gould
Willem Dafoe
Brad Garrett
Joe Ranft
Allison Janney
Austin Pendleton
Stephen Root
Geoffrey Rush
Nicolas Bird
Erica Beck
LuLu Ebeling
Barry Humphries
Music by Thomas Newman
Robbie Williams (end credits song, "Beyond the Sea")
Antonio Carlos Jobim
Bob Bain
Bernard Herrmann
Cinematography Sharon Calahan
Jeremy Lasky
Editing by David Ian Salter
Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures
Release date(s) May 30, 2003
Running time 100 min
Country United States
Australia
Language English
Budget $94 million[1]
Gross revenue United States:
$339,714,978
Worldwide: $864,625,978
DVD Sales:
over 40 million copies
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Finding Nemo is a 2003 computer-animated American family film. It was written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks), who along with a regal tang called Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), searches for his son Nemo (Alexander Gould). Along the way he learns to take risks and that his son is capable of taking care of himself.

The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was a financial blockbuster as it grossed over $864 million worldwide.[1] It is the best-selling DVD of all time, with over 40 million copies sold as of 2006.[2] In 2008, the American Film Institute named it the 10th greatest American Animated film ever made during their 10 Top 10. [3]

This film was rated G by the MPAA.

Contents

Plot

When the Ocellaris clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) and his wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), move in to a new home, Coral is killed by a barracuda along with all of their eggs, except for one. Marlin finds that egg and promises it he will never leave it. Marlin names it Nemo (Alexander Gould), the name that Coral would have chosen for one of the eggs. The egg is damaged, which would leave Nemo with one fin much smaller than the other.

Nemo,Ocellaris clownfish with one fin smaller than the other referred as "lucky fin" by his father,Marlin
Nemo,Ocellaris clownfish with one fin smaller than the other referred as "lucky fin" by his father,Marlin

Later, Nemo begins his first day at school and is frustrated and embarrassed by his overprotective father. Marlin has constantly warned Nemo about the dangers of the ocean because he himself fears them. To show his father that there's nothing to be afraid of, Nemo deliberately disobeys his father by swimming out into open water but, in the process, is captured by a scuba-diver. Marlin races after the diver's boat but quickly loses it. Desperately searching for directions, he bumps into Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a regal tang who suffers from short-term memory loss, but is nonetheless relentlessly optimistic in contrast to Marlin. Shortly afterward, they encounter three dieting sharks, Bruce, Anchor and Chum (Barry Humphries, Eric Bana and Bruce Spence respectively) and flee when Bruce enters an unwilling feeding frenzy, as well as an angler fish at the bottom of a deep trench. They also recover a diver's mask that fell from the diver's boat into a trench and discover that Nemo has been taken to Sydney, Australia; the time Dory spends with Marlin also helps her remember certain things longer (to a certain extent). They are directed by a school of fish (one of them voiced by John Ratzenberger) that the fastest way there is via the East Australian Current, and they tell Dory to tell Marlin to swim through the trench leading to it rather than over it. However, Marlin decides to swim over it when he thinks the trench is too dangerous, and end up in a "forest" of jellyfish where Dory is nearly stung to death.

Meanwhile, Nemo is placed in a fish tank in a dentist's office and soon finds out that he is to become the birthday present for a young girl named Darla (Lulu Ebeling), who is described as "a fish killer" (as it turns out, she simply gets over-excited when given a fish for gift and shakes the bag too much). He soon discovers the other fish in the tank are all bent on escape led by a Moorish Idol named Gill (Willem Dafoe), who proposes an escape plan that involves Nemo jamming the filter in the tank. However, the first attempt fails and Nemo is nearly killed by the filter; Gill realizes that he had put Nemo's life at risk to fulfill his own ends and, after mulling it over, apologizes to Nemo.

Marlin and Dory are recovered by a group of sea turtles who are riding the East Australian Current, and Dory makes a full recovery. As he befriends the turtle Crush and his family, Marlin tells some of the sea turtles about his reason and experience of the adventure. This story travels among the sea creatures and eventually Nemo hears it through a friendly brown pelican named Nigel. Nemo is inspired by this and succeeds in his attempt to jam the filter again. The tank begins to get dirty, which the fish believe will make the dentist take them out of the tank into individual plastic bags to clean it, after which they would roll out the window and into the harbor. However, he instead installs a new high-tech filter which cleans the tank while the fish are sleeping, foiling their plan.

Marlin and Dory arrive in Sydney with the help of a blue whale, and meet Nigel (Geoffrey Rush), who agrees to take them to the dentist's office. The dentist scoops Nemo up in a net, but the other fish save him by entering the bag with him and swimming down, releasing the net from his grip—until the dentist scoops him up in his plastic bag to give to his niece. Nemo pretends to be dead in the hopes that the dentist will flush him down the toilet as "all drains lead to the ocean". Marlin, Dory, and Nigel arrive at the office and, shocked to see Nemo belly-up, believe he is truly dead. After they are thrown out the window, Gill helps Nemo escape down the dentist's sink to the ocean.

Although deeply depressed in the belief that his rescue attempt amounted to nothing, Marlin thanks Dory and tells her he is going home on his own. Dory, however, is reluctant to be left on her own again, claiming that with Marlin she can remember things better. Marlin still swims away to go home, leaving Dory hopelessly lost and confused. Dory then bumps into Nemo and she is able to reunite them. Moments later, Dory is caught in a fishing net along with a school of grouper. Nemo has a plan to save her by telling the fish caught in the net to swim down, but Marlin is reluctant to let him go for fear that he will lose him again. Marlin, however, realizes he must let Nemo go and they are able to save Dory as well as the other fish. After the rescue, Marlin reconciles with his son for being overprotective.

Marlin and Nemo somehow manage to return home. Nemo leaves for school, and the now-confident Marlin tells him to "go have an adventure". In the epilogue, the fish in the dentist's tank are able to escape; however, they are still in their plastic bags.

Voice cast


Trivia: Three of the cast members (Albert Brooks, Alexander Gould and Elizabeth Perkins) co-star in the Showtime series Weeds.

Production

 Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (June 2008)

The movie was dedicated to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar animator who died of melanoma in October 2002, seven months before the film was released.

Pre-production of the film took place in early 1997. Film production began, according to IMDb, in January 2000 with a crew of 180.

Danny Elfman was asked by executive producer John Lasseter to compose the film score, but despite promotional posters still saying "music by DANNY ELFMAN", Elfman dropped out. After that, someone, possibly co-writer/director Andrew Stanton, asked Hans Zimmer to compose the score. However, Zimmer dropped out, too, as he was working on Shark Tale.

Robin Williams, who worked for Eisner and Disney before in Aladdin and had a bitter fall out with him and The Walt Disney Company after going back on the deal they had (Robin Williams and the Disney studio), has hinted in an interview that he refused a role in this film, because it would mean working for Michael Eisner again. He will not state which role he refused [1].

In an interview, Megan Mullally revealed that she was originally doing a voice in the film. According to Mullally, the producers were quite disappointed when they learned that the voice Mullally used for Karen Walker wasn't her natural speaking voice. The producers hired her anyway, and then strongly encouraged her to use her Karen Walker voice for the role. When Mullally refused, she was fired.[4]

Characters

Main article: List of Finding Nemo characters


Reception

Finding Nemo set a record as the highest grossing opening weekend for an animated feature, making $70 million (surpassed a year later in 2004 by Shrek 2). It went on to gross more than $864.6 million worldwide, in the process becoming Pixar's most commercially successful film to date. It received a 98% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[5]

The film's prominent use of clownfish prompted mass purchase of the animals for children's pets in the United States, even though the movie portrayed the use of fish as pets negatively and that saltwater aquariums are notably tricky and expensive to maintain.[6] As of 2004, in Vanuatu, clownfish were being caught on a large scale for sale as pets, motivated by the demand.[7]

At the same time, the film had a central theme that "all drains lead back to the ocean" (Nemo escapes from the aquarium by going down a sink drain, ending up in the sea.) Since water typically undergoes treatment before leading to the ocean, the JWC Environmental company quipped that a more realistic title for the movie might be Grinding Nemo.[8] However, in Sydney, much of the sewer system does pass directly to outfall pipes deep offshore, without a high level of treatment (although pumping and some filtering occurs.)[9] Additionally, according to the DVD, there was a cut sequence with Nemo going through a treatment plant's mechanisms before ending up in the ocean pipes. However, in the final product, logos for "Sydney Water Treatment" are featured prominently along the path to the ocean, implying that Nemo did pass through some water treatment.

Tourism in Australia strongly increased during the summer and autumn of 2003, with many tourists wanting to swim off the coast of Eastern Australia to "find Nemo."[citation needed] The Australian Tourism Commission (ATC) launched several marketing campaigns in China and the USA in order to improve tourism in Australia many of them using Finding Nemo movie clips. [2][10] Queensland, Australia also used Finding Nemo to draw tourists to promote its state for vacationers.[11]

Awards

Finding Nemo won the Academy Award and Saturn Award for Best Animated Film. It also won the award for best Animated Film at the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, the Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, the Online Film Critics Society Awards, and the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards.[12]

The film received many awards, including:

Finding Nemo was also nominated for:

In June 2008 the American Film Institute revealed its "Ten top Ten", the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres, after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Finding Nemo was acknowledged as the 10th best film in the animation genre.[13][14] It was the most recently released film on the list, one of three movie made after the year 2000, the others being Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Shrek.

Music

Main article: Finding Nemo (soundtrack)

Finding Nemo - The Musical

Larger-than-life puppets in a scene from the stage adaptation of Finding Nemo at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Larger-than-life puppets in a scene from the stage adaptation of Finding Nemo at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

The stage musical Tarzan Rocks! occupied the Theater in the Wild at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida from 1999 to 2006. When, in January 2006, it closed, it was rumored that a musical adaptation of Finding Nemo would replace it.[15] This was confirmed in April 2006, when Disney announced that the adaptation, with new songs written by Tony Award-winning Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, would "combine puppets, dancers, acrobats and animated backdrops" and open in late 2006.[16] Tony Award-winning director Peter Brosius signed on to direct the show, with Michael Curry, who designed puppets for Disney's successful stage version of The Lion King, serving as leading puppet and production designer.

Anderson-Lopez said that the couple agreed to write the adaptation of "one of their favorite movies of all time" after considering "The idea of people coming in [to see the musical] at 4, 5 or 6 and saying, 'I want to do that'....So we want to take it as seriously as we would a Broadway show."[17] To condense the feature-length film to thirty minutes, she said she and Lopez focused on a single theme from the movie, the idea that "The world's dangerous and beautiful."[17]

The forty minute show (which is performed five times daily) went into previews at the Theater in the Wild on November 5, 2006, and opened on January 24, 2007. Several musical numbers took direct inspiration from lines in the film, including "(In The) Big Blue World," "Fish Are Friends, Not Food," "Just Keep Swimming," and "Go With the Flow." In January 2007, a New York studio recording of the show was released on iTunes, with Lopez and Anderson-Lopez providing the voices for Marlin and Dory, respectively. Avenue Q star Stephanie D'Abruzzo also appeared on the recording, as Sheldon/Deb.

It is unknown whether the show will be expanded and transfer to Broadway, though Walt Disney Parks & Resorts executive Ann Hamburger has said that "she would love for that to happen."[17] Nemo is notable for being the first non-musical animated film to which Disney has added songs to produce a stage musical.

Trailers

One Pixar tradition is to create one trailer for each of their films that contains no footage from the actual unreleased film. The trailers for this film:

  • Dory and Marlin get lost and have to ask for directions. Marlin asks a school of fish (played by John Ratzenberger), but Dory scares them away before they can give the directions.

Attractions

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Box Office Mojo: Finding Nemo (Retrieved on December 14, 2007)
  2. ^ Boone, Louis E. Contemporary Business 2006, Thomson South-Western, page 4 - ISBN 0324320892
  3. ^ AFI: 10 Top 10
  4. ^ Megan Mullally - Megan Mullally Dropped From Finding Nemo
  5. ^ "Finding Nemo (2003)". Rotten Tomatoes.com. Retrieved on 2008-02-12.
  6. ^ Jackson, Elizabeth (29 November 2003). "Acquiring Nemo", The Business Report. Retrieved on 2006-11-10. 
  7. ^ Corcoran, Mark (9 November 2004). "Vanuatu - Saving Nemo", ABC Foreign Correspondent. Retrieved on 2006-10-23. 
  8. ^ Company Warns of 'Grinding Nemo', FoxNews.com/AP, 2003-06-06.
  9. ^ "Coastal sewage treatment plants operated by Sydney Water". Sydney Water (unknown date). Retrieved on 2006-11-26. North Head and Bondi would be the closest sewage treatment plants to the location of the film. Further explanation of "primary" sewage treatment can be found here.
  10. ^ Mitchell, Peter (3 June 2003). "Nemo-led recovery hope", The Age. Retrieved on 2006-10-23. 
  11. ^ Dennis, Anthony (11 August 2003). "Sydney ignores Nemo", The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved on 2006-10-23. 
  12. ^ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266543/awards Awards for Finding Nemo] (Retrieved on February 12, 2008)
  13. ^ American Film Institute (2008-06-17). "AFI Crowns Top 10 Films in 10 Classic Genres", ComingSoon.net. Retrieved on 2008-08-18. 
  14. ^ "Top Ten Animation". www.afi.com. Retrieved on 2008-06-18.
  15. ^ Finding Nemo - The Musical, Walt Disney World Magic.
  16. ^ Hernandez, Ernio. "Avenue Q Composer Lopez Co-Pens Musical Finding Nemo for Disney," Playbill.com (2006-04-10).
  17. ^ a b c Maupin, Elizabeth (2006-11-26). "Swimming with big fish", Orlando Sentinel. Retrieved on 2007-03-22. 

External links

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Shrek (2001) · Spirited Away (2002) · Finding Nemo (2003) · The Incredibles (2004) · Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) · Happy Feet (2006) · Ratatouille (2007)
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