Finding Nemo
Marlin and his partner Coral are clownfish who live a happy life inside an Anenomy, at least they did until Coral and all but one of their eggs are eaten by a predator. Now Marlin and his only son Nemo live in the same Anenomie only Marlin is terrified of the big dangerous ocean they live in. Marlins’ worst fears are realised when Nemo is taken by a diver and now Marlin with the...
Plot
Marlin and his partner Coral are clownfish who live a happy life inside an Anenomy, at least they did until Coral and all but one of their eggs are eaten by a predator. Now Marlin and his only son Nemo live in the same Anenomie only Marlin is terrified of the big dangerous ocean they live in. Marlins’ worst fears are realised when Nemo is taken by a diver and now Marlin with the help of his new friend, the forgetful Blue Tang fish named Dory must travel to Sydney to rescue him. Along the way they have many adventures including a tangle with Jellyfish, a meeting with Sharks Anonymous (who are trying to stop eating fish) and some really radical turtles dude. There are 3.7 trillion fish in the ocean, will Marlin find his son amongst them?
Review
I’ve always been a big fan of the Pixar films, right from the original Toy Story. While this is partly down to the superb imagery and the way they bring such artificial worlds to life, it’s also down to the great level of humour in their films. Although on a basic level they appear to be children’s films, there’s always so many levels to the humour involved that they can be enjoyed by anyone.
With this in mind I was very surprised that I wasn’t exactly blow away by Monsters Inc, it just didn’t seem to have the depth of previous titles. Although the right elements were potentially there, in that it was by far the best looking Pixar film to date (at the time) and there were plenty of gags and film spoofs. It just seemed considerably more childish than previous released, it also didn’t help the both Shrek and Ice Age were around the same time and I felt these were both much better films.
It was with some relief then that I discovered that Finding Nemo was a real return to form for Pixar. The film does look stunning with a real feel of an underwater environment, the way light trickles through from the surface and everything undulates under the current is a joy to watch. I also found it really funny with some great set pieces and very strong characters. Dory played by Ellen De Genre is definitely the star of the film, Ellen plays the dizzy forgetful fish perfectly.
There are many great characters here including the fish loving sharks (“Fish are friends, not food”), the thrill seeking, surfer dude turtles and all the inhabitants of the dentists tank that Nemo find himself in. Essentially this is the same formula as all previous Pixar films in that it’s a buddy movie, but that doesn’t really matter, when it’s done this well. I’m so happy to see Pixar return to form and I look forward to the release of The Incredibles now
Video/Audio
I am to be truthful quite stunned by the amount of reviews around that sing the praises of the video quality on this disk, as I personally think it is awful. Before explaining myself let me go through the video details. Disk 1 contains a 1.78:1 Anamorphic version of the film while Disk 2 contains a 4:3 cropped version. Although I’ve stated that the video quality is awful it’s only for one particular reason. In many respects it’s superb with rich vibrant colours and fabulous contrast and brightness. However there is a major problem with digital compression here. The average bit rate throughout this disk seems to be between 3 -5 mbps and this low rate has a real effect on the picture quality. In many scenes there are clear digital problems around some of the characters (Marlin in particular). This gives a halo effect around some of the characters and in some cases colours even seem to bleed into the background. For me it was so evident in some scenes that it actually detracted from my enjoyment of the film. With Pixars history of releasing such superb quality DVD’s it’s a huge shame to find the quality on this one so disappointing.
Thankfully the audio quality is a completely different matter. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is superbly immersive. You get a real feeling of being in an underwater environment from every swish of a tail to the gurgling of bubbles. There’s also plenty of bass throughout, especially during scenes like the underwater mines explosion. A really top quality soundtrack.
Extras
Disk 1
- Visual commentary – This is actually a very good commentary track. The commentary itself is broken up with occasional additional footage including behind the scene sections, deleted scenes, scene breakdowns and interviews etc. These additional sections actually bring the commentary to over two hours but they also help to keep you interest throughout. If you prefer you can also view these extended sections separately. I should also mention that Disney’s history of making incompatible DVD’s comes through again as I couldn’t get this commentary to work properly on PowerDVD 5 on my laptop. It would keep jumping from scene to scene and restarting from the beginning randomly, nice one Disney.
- Making Nemo documentary is an informative if perhaps a little brief documentary. It contains lots of behind the scenes footage at Pixar Studios and gives a good insight into the amount of work that goes into a Pixar production. It also shows that all Pixar employees do seem to be slightly mad although they also clearly have a lot of fun in their jobs.
- Virtual Aquariums– A selection of seven different scenes from the film that can be viewed full screen. While these scenes do demonstrate the incredible amount of detail Pixar puts into every single background the extra itself is ultimately pretty pointless.
- Design Galleries– This is broken into four sections and show concept diagrams from Art Review, Characters, Environments and a full Colour Script of over 300 images.
Disk 2
- Exploring The Reef - When this starts it looks like it’s going to be a serious nature program, however the Finding Nemo characters start to make an appearance and it soon turns into a highly amusing farce. Behind all the jokes however there is a serious preaching here about how mankind is destroying the ocean and we need to start taking more responsibility.
- Knick Knack is a short animation that was made by Pixar six years before the release of Toy Story. It features a snowman stuck in a snow globe who desperately tries to escape the globe in order to get to a stunning blonde figurine. Even though the animation now looks dated, the magic Pixar humour is abundant in the short and makes for a few minutes of great fun. There’s also an additional commentary track to go along with it.
- Mr Rays Encyclopedia – This is a selection of short information clips on many of the species featured in the film. They are all presented with voice over from Mr Ray (Bob Peterson). This is definitely one for the kids, as the information is very short and dumbed down considerably.
- Fisharades is another one for the kiddies. It’s basically a little game featuring the schooling fish from the film. Basically the school starts to make the shape of something and you have to guess what the shape is before the timer runs out.
- Story Time – A graphical story book, which features two options a narrative read along or a read to yourself mode. Once again one for the kids, although the animation is quite nice they they’ll probably enjoy it quite a lot.
- Behind The Scenes – Character Interviews, Studio Tour and Publicity material are included in the section. Nothing much here I’ m afraid, the character interviews seem to be mainly voiced by impersonators not the original cast and the rest of the material is pretty light. There’s also a short and easy to find Easter Egg in this section.
- Virtual Aquariums
– More of these as in disk 1, however these are slightly better as some of them feature characters from the film swimming around inside a tank.
- Sneak Peeks – Trailers for Home on The Range, The Lion King, Santa Claus 2, Special Edition DVD’s, Spy Kids 3D and most importantly Pixars next feature The Incredibles. The Incredibles feature is actually very good and this feature looks promising.
The two disk pack comes in a plastic amaray case with a nice shiny cardboard outer sleeve. Subtitles are available in English, French and Spanish and the film is broken into 32 chapters.
Overall
Given that many of the extras mention the fact that this film was three years in the making and a hard journey, doubled with the fact that they all seem so proud of it. It seems such a shame that the same pride wasn’t put into the video quality of the DVD release. Perhaps the fact that it’s set underwater is a real strain on the DVD format, I can’t see it myself though as the bit rate is so low in many points through the film that it just seems like a lazy print. I also suspect that I’m going to get a lot of negative feedback from this review as every other review I’ve read raves about the quality of this disk set. Personally though, I also think that the quality of the extra features is pretty poor as well. Although it looks like there’s quite a lot here, there isn’t really much depth to many of the extras apart from the commentary.
I’m probably being overly critical but I don’t really care if I am as previous Pixar releases have been of a really high quality and considering Finding Nemo is such a good film the lack of care put into the DVD is for me inexcusable. Don’t listen to my ramblings though, I recommend that you get hold of a copy yourself and make your own mind up. Perhaps I’m wrong and everyone else out there is right. I for one will be waiting and hoping that they do something different with the Region 2 release though.
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