Officially speaking, this is a virgin viewing. I downloaded the movie around the time of its theatrical release but it was either a workprint (‘cos I’m pretty sure there were scenes on the final cut, this DVD, that I hadn’t seen before, all through the movie) or just a version that failed to include the opening (which I had definitely not seen before, the whole Nemo’s mother bit, I never even saw Coral, lol)... either way, at least I’m legal again now, I purchased the DVD, Disney/Pixar have their money :-p

This is the best animated movie ever made to date. I say that even at the same time as maintaining movies like Spirit and Tarzan among my own personal all-time faves, and keeping those two in particular up top of my listing… but technically speaking, as far as animation is concerned, this movie is the all-time best, like, technically speaking, say, Citizen Kane is the greatest live action. The colour is simply incredible, the rendering of the CG imagery, just, everything, is the absolute pinnacle of achievement in this field. This is the first truly worthy recipient of Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. Andrew Stanton certainly received the biggest honour he could have for this movie, but I would add too, that this movie has the second best screenplay of all-time, perhaps even a tie, next to Back to the Future, in my opinion, just the basic use of storytelling… not clever screenwriting like something like Fargo or The Big Sleep or Chinatown or The Usual Suspects, all great screenplays, but this, along with Back to the Future, just tells a story, cinematically, perfectly. Stanton should have received this award too. It owes a lot to Hitchcock, like Back to the Future did (it contains at least two straight homages, to Psycho and The Birds, but plenty more is indebted to Hitch).

It’s beautiful, and when you compare it to Disney’s own releases post-Tarzan, you can understand and appreciate why Pixar have ditched Disney… I cannot wait for their future productions. It’s like they have literally stolen the magic of Disney for themselves… these guys know how to make a “Disney movie”... only now it’s Pixar.

One thing I would add, just a personal note really ‘cos I know exactly the reason the movie didn’t end this way, it just wouldn’t sit with most people… but I felt this on the “first” viewing and again on this viewing. I may be morbid… but I think the movie would be that bit more powerful and would probably still work for the audience it has and yet draw a whole other audience, if Nemo had actually died at the end. If I’d had anything to do with the story sessions for the movie, I’d have been first to argue this to the point of being fired, ‘cos I think it really would add a lot to the resonance of the movie. They make you think he’s dead… they make you anticipate your own reaction to his death, it works pretty well for that… but y’know, it’d just be so moving if he’d actually sacrificed himself, for Dory, his new mother, that Marlon let him go ‘cos for once he was being trusting… it’d just be really complex and true to life and… blah… I just feel it would have made the movie even beyond the perfect it already is

This is going to go up and up in my opinion on each viewing. It’s relentlessly entertaining, and artistically as perfect as possible.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004 at 10:56 pm in 5 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as animation, Disney, fish, Pixar, top 250. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.