I shall call him Squishy and he shall be mine and he shall be my Squishy.

Finding Nemo

(2003)

(SPOILERS) As the Pixar brand goes, Finding Nemo is perhaps their most formulaic movie. It should therefore, by rights, also be their most tired and repetitive in retrospect, particularly as it’s their most overt example of studio hands (co-directors Andrew Stanton, who also gets sole screenplay credit, and Lee Unkrich) working through the tribulations of parentage, at least until Inside Out came along. There is a cumulative feeling at times that the studio is too honed, too precise and meticulous in hitting all its carefully calculated beats, such that, no matter how individuated the subject matter, the emotional content tends to be unvaried and identikit (the most obvious fall out of this being The Good Dinosaur). That’s probably partly because other studios are less inclined to foreground such content, more equivocal about wearing their hearts on their sleeves. It’s also because the John Lasseter command desk is so hawk-like in its oversight, even Jeffrey Katzenberg might blanche. But Finding Nemo rides this wave of stock-in-trades so well, and with such accompanying zest, while simultaneously providing a breathlessly non-stop rollercoaster ride, it’s impossible to resist.

Nemo wouldn’t quite sit at the top of my Pixar pile (the trio of WALL-E, The Incredibles and Ratatouille can be found there) but it’s near enough, thanks to a screenplay that is not only wall-to-wall with inimitable supporting characters, but also ensures the central ones are engaging and well-matched. Okay, Nemo himself is pretty much your classic unreconstituted cute Disney muffin, the baby elephant from The Jungle Book given his own movie, but even he isn’t too cute to bear. And Marlin’s over-protective father schtick might be just a little too over-exerted, if not for being voiced by Albert Brooks, who manages to be effortlessly sarcastic and earnestly diligent within the space of a breath. The picture, like many a Disney classic, opens dramatically with high tragedy, so providing an effective grounding for Marlin’s angst. And, over-earnest as he is, he’s proven right to be concerned, but as is always the way, the journey is about his (re-) opening up to life rather than his son learning caution.

It’s to the credit of Stanton and Unkrich that they don’t pause long enough for the sentiments to be worked over. I suspect they would indulge themselves, were the picture made now (Finding Dory, certainly, is more indulgent in that sphere). There’s a winning desire to make this a rousing adventure first and underpinned by a genuinely-felt story second (or rather, it is understood that the genuinely-felt story is the bedrock, and once established the makers get to be as frivolous as they like), and I suspect that’s why it remained top of the Pixar roost for such a long time. For me, the sincerity of Toy Story can get a bit ripe at times (I think that’s mostly the stomach-churning Randy Newman factor, to be honest), whereas Nemo rarely congratulates itself over its own well-meaning.

Much of the picture’s success is down to the perfectly batty vocal performance of Ellen DeGeneres, whose Dory has an inspired, stream-of-consciousness looseness, aided and abetted by perfect odd-couple pairing with Brooks; one is utterly guileless, the other hopelessly guarded and highly-strung. It’s a classic double-act. And, if the picture follows the quest format more doggedly and overtly than most, it does so with such acumen for each new incident it’s impossible not to be swept along.

At times too, Nemo offers genuinely outstanding moments straddling tension and humour unequalled in the Pixar canon, from the onset of a sea of jellyfish to the encounter with an angler, and a sperm whale (“Wow, I wish I could speak whale”), or the beautifully sustained tension/hilarity with a shark self-help group abstaining from eating fish. Voiced by Barry Humphries, Bruce is a magnificently gregarious creation, even when fighting bloodthirsty urges.

If there’s occasionally a note of too-easy familiarity (the Stanton-voiced stoner turtle Crush), there’s also giddy inspiration: the beady eyed seagulls out of an Aardman production, all repeating “Mine!” ad infinitum (and given a The Birds-style gathering effect; not the only Hitchcock reference, see below), Nigel (Geoffrey Rush), the pelican who continually finds his way into the dentist’s surgery (my favourite sequence may be the pandemonium he causes there, fully unleashed, the dentist at a loss as to explain what is going on) and the Mission: Impossible poignant presence of Willem Dafoe as the tank-bound Gill, desperate to escape but having to remind himself there are limits. The reliance on Antipodean accents is also very welcome, providing a splash of colour and distinctive streak of humour.

Stanton even seems conscious that he may be over-doing his cathartic parental outpouring, hence the antidote to the harmless, lovable offspring in hideous nightmare child Darla, the would-be recipient of Nemo, introduced with Psycho strings as the kind of kid you absolutely do not trust with a pet (the kind whose idea of stroking a cat is to see how far it will stretch before breaking).

And, as if it needs saying, the animation is absolutely gorgeous. It may be 13 years since this came out, but to my eye it hasn’t aged a day (which can’t be said for Toy Story, showing how far the studio came in only eight years, and how advances since then have been subtler). Did Finding Nemo need a sequel? Absolutely not, but on the other hand it’s not one you think instantly think would be spoil by revisiting. That said, its inarguable that, say, the run of substandard Shrek sequels negatively impacted what was a highly accomplished original. Coming Finding Fishy Four, everyone may have concluded Pixar should have left well alone.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

The X-Files 8.7: Via Negativa I wasn’t as down on the last couple of seasons of The X-Files as most seemed to be. For me, the mythology arc walked off a cliff somewhere around the first movie, with only the occasional glimmer of something worthwhile after that. So the fact that the show was tripping over itself with super soldiers and Mulder’s abduction/his and Scully’s baby (although we all now know it wasn’t, sheesh ), anything to stretch itself beyond breaking point in the vain hope viewers would carry on dangling, didn’t really make much odds. Of course, it finally snapped with the wretched main arc when the show returned, although the writing was truly on the wall with Season 9 finale The Truth . For the most part, though, I found 8 and 9 more watchable than, say 5 or 7. They came up with their fair share of engaging standalones, one of which I remembered to be Via Negativa .

You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972) (SPOILERS) Hitherto, I was most familiar with Jeremiah Johnson in the form of a popular animated gif of beardy Robert Redford smiling and nodding in slow zoom close up (a moment that is every bit as cheesy in the film as it is in the gif). For whatever reason, I hadn’t mustered the enthusiasm to check out the 1970s’ The Revenant until now (well, beard-wise, at any rate). It’s easy to distinguish the different personalities at work in the movie. The John Milius one – the (mythic) man against the mythic landscape; the likeably accentuated, semi-poetic dialogue – versus the more naturalistic approach favoured by director Sydney Pollack and star Redford. The fusion of the two makes for a very watchable, if undeniably languorous picture. It was evidently an influence on Dances with Wolves in some respects, although that Best Picture Oscar winner is at greater pains to summon a more sensitive portrayal of Native Americans (and thus, perversely, at times a more patr

You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

I tell you, it saw me! The hanged man’s asphyx saw me!

The Asphyx (1972) (SPOILERS) There was such a welter of British horror from the mid 60s to mid 70s, even leaving aside the Hammers and Amicuses, that it’s easy to lose track of them in the shuffle. This one, the sole directorial effort of Peter Newbrook (a cameraman for David Lean, then a cinematographer), has a strong premise and a decent cast, but it stumbles somewhat when it comes to taking that premise any place interesting. On the plus side, it largely eschews the grue. On the minus, directing clearly wasn’t Newbrook’s forte, and even aided by industry stalwart cinematographer Freddie Young (also a go-to for Lean), The Aspyhx is stylistically rather flat.

Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

The Razor’s Edge (1984) (SPOILERS) I’d hadn’t so much a hankering as an idle interest in finally getting round to seeing Bill Murray’s passion project. Partly because it seemed like such an odd fit. And partly because passion isn’t something you tend to associate with any Murray movie project, involving as it usually does laidback deadpan. Murray, at nigh-on peak fame – only cemented by the movie he agreed to make to make this movie – embarks on a serious-acting-chops dramatic project, an adaptation of W Somerset Maugham’s story of one man’s journey of spiritual self-discovery. It should at least be interesting, shouldn’t it? A real curio? Alas, not. The Razor’s Edge is desperately turgid.

My Doggett would have called that crazy.

The X-Files 9.4: 4-D I get the impression no one much liked Agent Monica Reyes (Annabeth Gish), but I felt, for all the sub-Counsellor Troi, empath twiddling that dogged her characterisation, she was a mostly positive addition to the series’ last two years (of its main run). Undoubtedly, pairing her with Doggett, in anticipation of Gillian Anderson exiting just as David Duchovny had – you rewatch these seasons and you wonder where her head was at in hanging on – made for aggressively facile gender-swapped conflict positions on any given assignment. And generally, I’d have been more interested in seeing how two individuals sympathetic to the cause – her and Mulder – might have got on. Nevertheless, in an episode like 4-D you get her character, and Doggett’s, at probably their best mutual showing.

You know what I sometimes wish? I sometimes wish I were ordinary like you. Ordinary and dead like all the others.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) (SPOILERS) Bryan Forbes’ adaptation of Mark McShane’s 1961’s novel has been much acclaimed. It boasts a distinctive storyline and effective performances from its leads, accompanied by effective black-and-white cinematography from Gerry Turpin and a suitably atmospheric score from John Barry. I’m not sure Forbes makes the most of the material, however, as he underlines Séance on a Wet Afternoon ’s inherently theatrical qualities at the expense of its filmic potential.

A ship is the finest nursery in the world.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) (SPOILERS) An odd one, this, as if Disney were remaking The Swiss Family Robinson for adults. One might perhaps have imagined the Mouse House producing it during their “Dark Disney” phase. But even then, toned down. After all, kids kidnapped by pirates sounds like an evergreen premise for boy’s own adventuring (more girl’s own here). The reality of Alexander Mackendrick’s film is decidedly antithetical to that; there’s a lingering feeling, despite A High Wind in Jamaica ’s pirates largely observing their distance, that things could turn rather nasty (and indeed, if Richard Hughes’ 1929 novel had been followed to the letter, they would have more explicitly).

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

Marnie (1964) (SPOILERS) Hitch in a creative ditch. If you’ve read my Vertigo review, you’ll know I admired rather than really liked the picture many fete as his greatest work. Marnie is, in many ways, a redux, in the way De Palma kept repeating himself in the early 80s only significantly less delirious and… well, compelling. While Marnie succeeds in commanding the attention fitfully, it’s usually for the wrong reasons. And Hitch, digging his heels in as he strives to fashion a star against public disinterest – he failed to persuade Grace Kelly out of retirement for Marnie Rutland – comes entirely adrift with his leads.

Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

Private’s Progress (1956) (SPOILERS) Truth be told, there’s good reason sequel I’m Alright Jack reaps the raves – it is, after all, razor sharp and entirely focussed in its satire – but Private’s Progress is no slouch either. In some respects, it makes for an easy bedfellow with such wartime larks as Norman Wisdom’s The Square Peg (one of the slapstick funny man’s better vehicles). But it’s also, typically of the Boulting Brothers’ unsentimental disposition, utterly remorseless in rebuffing any notions of romantic wartime heroism, nobility and fighting the good fight. Everyone in the British Army is entirely cynical, or terrified, or an idiot.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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