Finding Nemo

The film has an artistic semblance of truth.  Finding Nemo has a story that truly could take place and sets it in a fantasy ocean adventure.  Because it is a film from Disney and marketed mostly for children, it is done in bright, vivid colors to keep young viewers attention.  The story is sad, starting off with Marlin losing his fish companion and a mass amount of children except one, and then losing that one child to fishermen.  Finding Nemo also shows us that no matter how bad things seem that we need to keep moving on, keep living.  As Dory says, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming."

The film is set in Sydney, Australia and The Great Barrier Reef.  This was a great choice of setting for a movie that involves ocean life.  The Great Barrier Reef is the worlds largest single structure made by living organisms and supports a wide variety of life.  Green sea turtles and clown fish are just two of the inhabitants of this wondrous reef and are the basis for two of the characters found in Finding Nemo.  Marlin and nemo are clown fish, and Crush and Squirt are green sea turtles. 

To create the look and feel of a real underwater environment, the Finding Nemo development team recreated several components found in the ocean: particulate matter(particles, like specks of dust in the air, that are always present in water); surge and swell (the constant movement); caustic light (patterns of light on the ocean floor and shafts of light); murk (how light filters out over distance) and reflection and refraction( the look of water form above and below the surface).  http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/nemo/behind.html All of these can be seen throughout the movie, for example, reflection and refraction is when Nemo is looking up through the water at the boat, or murk is when Marlin and Dory go through the trench. 

In the United States, the sterotypical audience for animated cartoons was once a theater full of screaming kids.  This perception has changed radically in the last decade, and in recent years animated films(including two Shrek films, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles) have been amoung the natins top grossing movies, indicating their broad appeal. The Art of Wathcing Films pg166-167  I think that even though Finding Nemo is animated it is a wonderful film, I love Disney movies.  They are something that not only I can watch, but am also able to enjoy with my children.  There is something for everyone, kids love the characters and there is subtle humor for the adults.