Finding Nemo is a 2003 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]
Plot
Marlin, a Ocellaris clownfish, takes extra care of his only child, Nemo, after his wife Coral and the rest of their eggs were eaten by a barracuda. Due to a crack in Nemo's egg, he has grown up with one small, weak fin, but which Marlin assures him is his "lucky fin". On the first day of school, the other kids tease Nemo about his overprotective father. Nemo decides to swim into the open waters to prove that he is capable but is quickly captured by a scuba diver, who climbs aboard a boat and drives off. Marlin is unable to keep up after a frantic chase but meets Dory, a regal tang with short-term memory loss. Together they discover a diver's mask on the ocean floor dropped from the boat, and Dory is able to read the address on it as being Sydney, Australia. The two set off; Marlin's story of determination quickly spreads about the oceans, and various sea creatures quickly give aid to his search.
Meanwhile, the diver, a dentist, returns to his office and places Nemo in a fish tank. Nemo meets the other fish, led by the Moorish idol Gill. When they realize that the dentist plans to give Nemo to his niece Darla, who has had a fateful history of dealing with pets before, they devise a plan to help free Nemo by forcing the tank to become dirty, requiring the dentist to remove the fish and allowing for their escape. The plan requires Nemo, the smallest of them, to swim up the water filter and disable it; the first attempt is nearly fateful for Nemo, but is able to succeed on a second attempt when he hears from Nigel, a Brown Pelican, that Marlin is coming for him. However, the plan backfires, as the dentist installs an automatic tank cleaner the next day, and Nemo becomes dejected. After several adventures, Marlin and Dory arrive in Sydney and are met by Nigel, who takes them to the dentist's office, but find the dentist is already getting ready to give Nemo to Darla. Nemo acts dead as to force him to be flushed down the drain and eventually into the sea, but this also causes Marlin to believe him to be dead. After Nigel's presence in the office causes a small pandemonium, Gill helps Nemo to escape down a drain.
Despite the fact that Dory claims to have better memory when around him, Marlin tells Dory to leave him alone once they are back in the sea. Dory swims off but encounters Nemo; though temporarily confused due to her memories, she eventually remembers Marlin's goal, and helps Nemo back to his father. The two, along with Dory, happily celebrate, but their joy is quickly cut short when Dory is caught, along with a school of grouper, in a fishing net. Despite Marlin's worries, Nemo swims to help the fish, including Dory, escape using a trick taught to him by Gill and the other aquarium fish. The three return back home, with Marlin less protective of Nemo now aware of his son's abilities; Nemo's stories of his adventures impress the other children, while Marlin is seen as an outstanding father by the other fish. Meanwhile, Gil and the other fish from the dentist's office have managed to make their escape via their original plan, ending up safely in the ocean but still in plastic bags.
Voice cast
Production
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 Michael Eisner and The Walt Disney Company in Aladdin, had a falling out out with Eisner and the company after they failed to honor an agreement he had with the studio. Williams has since hinted that he refused a role in this film because it would have meant working for Eisner again. Williams has not stated 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 to learn that the voice of her character Karen Walker on the television show Will & Grace 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]
The movie was dedicated to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar animator who died of melanoma in October 2002, seven months before the film was released.
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 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]
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.[14]
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.[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.
Music
Finding Nemo - The Musical
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. In 2009 Finding Nemo - The Musical was honored with a Thea award for Best Live Show from the Themed Entertainment Association.
See also
References
- ^ a b c "Finding Nemo (2002)". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=findingnemo.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
- ^ Boone, Louis E. Contemporary Business 2006, Thomson South-Western, page 4 - ISBN 0324320892
- ^ AFI: 10 Top 10
- ^ "Did Eisner and Katzenberg Bottle Up the Genie for 13 Years?". IMDb. Studio Briefing. March 16, 2005. http://www.imdb.com/news/ni0086739/. Retrieved 2009-06-24.
- ^ Megan Mullally - Megan Mullally Dropped From Finding Nemo
- ^ "Finding Nemo (2002)". Rotten Tomatoes.com. http://uk.rottentomatoes.com/m/finding_nemo/. Retrieved 2008-02-12.
- ^ Jackson, Elizabeth (November 29, 2002). "Acquiring Nemo". The Business Report. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/busrpt/stories/s1000651.htm. Retrieved 2006-11-10.
- ^ Corcoran, Mark (November 9, 2002). "Vanuatu - Saving Nemo". ABC Foreign Correspondent. http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s1239666.htm. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- ^ Company Warns of 'Grinding Nemo', FoxNews.com/AP, June 6, 2003.
- ^ Sydney Water. "Coastal sewage treatment plants operated by Sydney Water". Sydney Water. http://www.sydneywater.com.au/OurSystemsAndOperations/WastewaterTreatmentPlants/Coastal.cfm. Retrieved 2006-11-26.
- ^ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-08/18/content_255968.htm
- ^ Mitchell, Peter (November 3, 2002). "Nemo-led recovery hope". The Age. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/06/03/1054406187273.html. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- ^ Dennis, Anthony (February 11, 2003). "Sydney ignores Nemo". The Sydney Morning Herald. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/11/1060588323028.html?from=storyrhs. Retrieved 2006-10-23.
- ^ Awards for Finding Nemo (Retrieved on February 12, 2008)
- ^ American Film Institute (2008-06-17). "AFI Crowns Top 10 Films in 10 Classic Genres". ComingSoon.net. http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=46072. Retrieved 2008-08-18.
- ^ "Top Ten Animation". www.afi.com. http://www.afi.com/10top10/animation.html. Retrieved 2008-06-18.
- ^ Finding Nemo - The Musical, Walt Disney World Magic.
- ^ Hernandez, Ernio. "Avenue Q Composer Lopez Co-Pens Musical Finding Nemo for Disney," Playbill.com (April 10, 2006).
- ^ a b Maupin, Elizabeth (2006-11-26). "Swimming with big fish". Orlando Sentinel. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-nemo2606nov26,0,5434834.story?page=1. Retrieved 2007-03-22.
External links
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