Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo
Original theatrical poster
Directed by	Andrew Stanton Lee Unkrich
Written by	Story Andrew Stanton Screenplay Andrew Stanton Bob Peterson David Reynolds
Produced by	Graham Walters Executive producer John Lasseter Associate producer Jinko Gotoh
Starring	Albert Brooks Ellen DeGeneres Alexander Gould Willem Dafoe Brad Garrett Joe Ranft Allison Janney Austin Pendleton Stephen Root Geoffrey Rush Nicholas Bird Eric Bana LuLu Ebeling Barry Humphries
Cinematography	Sharon Calahan Jeremy Lasky
Edited by	David Ian Salter
Music by	Thomas Newman Robbie Williams Antonio Carlos Jobim Bob Bain Bernard Herrmann
Production companies	Walt Disney Pictures Pixar
Distributed by	Buena Vista
Release date	May 30, 2003
Running time	100 minutes
Country	Template:FilmUS
Language	English
Budget	$94 million[1]
Box office	$864,625,978[1]

Finding Nemo is a Template:Fy American CGI animated film. It was written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin, voiced by Albert Brooks, who along with a regal tang called Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, searches for his son Nemo, voiced by 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] and is the highest grossing G-rated movie of all time. In 2008, the American Film Institute named it the tenth greatest animated film ever made during their 10 Top 10. It was also the first Pixar animations studio film not to be released in November.^[3]

Shortly after the Ocellaris clownfish Marlin and his wife, Coral, move into a new home, Coral is eaten by a barracuda along with all of their eggs, except for one. Marlin finds that egg and promises it he will never leave it, naming it Nemo as suggested by Coral. The attack has left the egg damaged.

Some time later, Nemo begins his first day at school, but is frustrated and embarrassed by his overprotective and neurotic father. Marlin has constantly warned Nemo about the dangers of the ocean because he himself fears them, and also because one of Nemo's fins is much smaller and weaker than the other due to the damage to his egg (his "lucky fin"). Disobeying his father in order to show him that these fears are unfounded, Nemo deliberately swims out to open water; in the process, he is captured by a scuba diver. Marlin races after the diver's boat but quickly loses it. As he desperately searches for help, he bumps into Dory, a regal tang who suffers from short-term memory loss but is nonetheless relentlessly optimistic, in contrast to Marlin. The pair soon encounter three sharks, Bruce, Anchor and Chum, who are members of "Fish Eaters Anonymous," an organization modeled after AA.

Marlin and Dory find the diver's scuba mask and, in a scuffle over the mask, inadvertently spark Bruce into a feeding frenzy and are forced to flee into a deep trench, only to be nearly eaten by an angler fish. Dory remembers that she can read and they discover that Nemo has been taken to Sydney, Australia. Dory surprises herself by being able to remember the name and address written on it. A passing school of fish gives them directions to get there via the East Australian Current, and also advises them to go through the trench that leads to it. However, only Dory hears the warning and she quickly forgets it. Marlin doesn't like the looks of the trench and leads Dory over it, where both are nearly stung to death by a mass of jellyfish.

Meanwhile, Nemo is placed in a fishtank in a dentist's office. The dentist, who captured him earlier, plans to give Nemo to his niece Darla as a birthday present; the other fish in the tank fear her greatly, knowing her tendency to handle fish so roughly that they die. Their leader, Gill, a Moorish Idol, has been plotting a mass escape and calls on Nemo to jam the tank's water filter. The first attempt fails, nearly costing Nemo his life, and Gill apologizes for endangering him for personal gain.

Marlin and Dory are found by a group of sea turtles who are riding the East Australian Current, and they make a full recovery. As Marlin befriends the turtle Crush and his son Squirt, he tells some of the sea turtles about his reason for venturing so far from home. His story travels among the sea creatures, eventually reaching Nemo via a friendly Brown Pelican named Nigel. Nemo is inspired by this account and makes a second attempt on his own to jam the filter, this time meeting with success. The tank begins to get dirty, and the fish hope that the dentist will take them out so he can clean it; once they are in individual plastic bags, they can roll out the window and into the harbor. However, while they are sleeping, he installs a high-tech filter to keep the tank clean automatically, foiling their plan.

Marlin and Dory are swallowed by a blue whale, which delivers them safely to Sydney. Confronted by a pelican and a flock of hungry seagulls in the harbor, they are rescued by Nigel, who takes them to the office as the dentist removes Nemo from the tank and puts him in a bag. When Darla arrives, Nemo pretends to be dead, hoping that he will be flushed down the toilet and thus be able to reach the ocean. Marlin and Dory are shocked to see Nemo belly-up and believe he is truly dead. After they and Nigel are thrown out the window, Gill helps Nemo escape down the drain of the dentist's sink to the ocean.

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 by herself again, claiming that she can remember things better when he is around. Marlin still swims away to go home, leaving Dory hopelessly lost and confused. A chance encounter with Nemo jogs her memory of her adventures with Marlin and the two catch up with Marlin and there is a brief and happy reunion. Moments later, Dory is caught in a fishing net along with a school of grouper. Nemo has an idea to save her by telling the fish caught in the net to swim down, a trick the other fish in the tank had tried to use to save him from being scooped up in the dentist's net. Though Marlin is afraid to let him go out of fear of losing him again, he realizes that he has to let Nemo take this chance. The maneuver works, freeing Dory and the grouper, and Marlin reconciles with Nemo and apologizes for being overprotective.

Once they have returned home, Marlin is able to let Nemo "go have an adventure" at school, and he impresses and wins the respect of his neighbors for going across the ocean to find his son. In the epilogue, the automatic cleaner/filter in the dentist's fish tank breaks down, forcing him to put all the fish in plastic bags while he cleans it out; they soon reach the ocean, but are still stuck in their bags. As the credits roll, though, they are seen swimming freely in the ocean. The movie ends with a scared fish being brave enough to devour the angler fish, a fish that audience saw in the previous segment.

• Albert Brooks as Marlin
• Ellen DeGeneres as Dory
• Alexander Gould as Nemo
• Willem Dafoe as Gill
• Brad Garrett as Bloat
• Allison Janney as Peach
• Austin Pendleton as Gurgle
• Stephen Root as Bubbles
• Vicki Lewis as Deb / Flo
• Joe Ranft as Jacques
• Geoffrey Rush as Nigel
• Andrew Stanton as Crush
• Elizabeth Perkins as Coral
• Nicholas Bird as Squirt
• Bob Peterson as Mr. Ray
• Barry Humphries as Bruce
• Eric Bana as Anchor
• Bruce Spence as Chum
• Bill Hunter as Philip Sherman
• Lulu Ebeling as Darla Sherman
• Rove McManus as a crab

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (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.

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.^[4]

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.^[5]

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 was the second highest grossing movie of 2003, behind The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.^{[citation needed]} It is also highly critically acclaimed, as it currently holds a 98% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, an average of 89% on Metacritic and four stars from Empire.^[6]

The film's prominent use of clownfish prompted mass purchase of the animal as 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.^[7] As of 2003^[update], in Vanuatu, clownfish were being caught on a large scale for sale as pets, motivated by the demand.^[8]

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.^[9] 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 occur.)^[10] 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.^[11][12] Queensland, Australia also used Finding Nemo to draw tourists to promote its state for vacationers.^[13]

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.^[14]

The film received many awards, including:

• Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Movie and Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie, Ellen Degeneres.

Finding Nemo was also nominated for:

• Two Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen DeGeneres
• A Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
• Two MTV Movie Awards

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.^[15][16] It was the most recently released film among all ten lists, and one of only three movies made after the year 2000, the others being Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Shrek.

File:NemoTurtle.jpg

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.^[17] 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.^[18] 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."^[19] 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."^[19]

The forty minute show (which is performed five times daily) opened on January 2, 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.

Nemo is notable for being the first non-musical animated film to which Disney has added songs to produce a stage musical. Finding Nemo the Musical was recently honored with a Thea award for best live show from the Themed Entertainment Association.

• The Seas with Nemo & Friends
• Turtle Talk with Crush
• Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
• Crush's Coaster

• Official website from Disney
• Official website from Pixar
• Finding Nemo at IMDb
• Finding Nemo at AllMovie
• Template:Bcdb title
• Finding Nemo at Rotten Tomatoes
• Finding Nemo at Metacritic
• Finding Nemo at Box Office Mojo

Preceded by Bruce Almighty	Box office number-one films of 2003 (USA) June 1 June 15	Succeeded by 2 Fast 2 Furious
Preceded by 2 Fast 2 Furious		Succeeded by Hulk
Preceded by Bad Boys II	Box office number-one films of 2003 (UK) October 12 - November 2	Succeeded by The Matrix Revolutions