FINDING NEMO

'''Finding Nemo''' is an Academy Award-winning computer-animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. It was released in the United States/Canada on May 30, 2003, in Australia on August 27, 2003 and in the UK on 10 October, 2003. The movie is the fifth Disney/Pixar feature film and the first to be released during the summer season.
The movie was released on a 2-disc DVD on November 4, 2003 in the United States and Canada, in Australia on January 16, 2004, and the UK on February 27, 2004. It went on to become the best selling DVD of all time, with 28 million copies sold.^[1] ''Time'' magazine listed it #10 as one of the top best 100 films ever made.^[2]

Contents

Plot

Production

Characters

Reception

Legal challenges

Awards

''Finding Nemo - The Musical''

Attractions

See also

References

External links

Plot

After Marlin (Albert Brooks) the clownfish loses his wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), and all but one of his unborn children to a marauding barracuda, he promises that he will never let anything happen to the one remaining egg which he names Nemo.
Nemo (Alexander Gould), who was born with one smaller fin, begins his first day at school and is frustrated and embarrassed by his overprotective father. This is taken to such an extreme that Nemo deliberately disobeys his father by swimming out into open water. In the process he’s captured by a diver, who immediately leaves on a speedboat.
In trying to find where Nemo has been taken Marlin meets Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang with a memory-deficit disorder. She helps him find out Nemo has been taken to Sydney and the two of them travel there on the East Australian Current. During their time together Dory teaches Marlin to be more carefree. Marlin encounters several experiences during the journey that are contrary to his demeanor. On the way, Marlin pursues a boat, meets wannabe vegetarian sharks, an anglerfish, charges through a school of jellyfish, gets swallowed by a whale, and nearly gets eaten by a pelican. Such an adventure would become an exciting story tale that spreads throughout the ocean's inhabitants rapidly, eventually later on reaching Nemo and his newfound friends.
Meanwhile Nemo is placed in a fish tank in a dentist surgeon's office. He discovers that he is to be the birthday present of the dentist's niece Darla (LuLu Ebeling) who is "a fish killer" according to the other fish in the tank. It appears that she simply gets over-excited and shakes the fish bag too much. Gill (Willem Dafoe), one of the fish in the tank, proposes an escape plan which Nemo helps out with after being inspired by hearing the story of his father is looking for him and what he's been through in the process.
Marlin and Dory meet brown pelican Nigel (Geoffrey Rush) who is a friend of the fish in Nemo's tank who takes them to the dentist surgery. Meanwhile Gill's plan has failed and Nemo pretends to be dead to get the dentist to flush him down the toilet. Marlin arrives at this point and upon seeing Nemo pretending to be dead believes that he is actually dead. Marlin leaves and Gill helps to get Nemo washed down the surgery sink.
Marlin and Nemo reunite but moments later Dory is caught in a fishing net. Nemo has a plan to save her but Marlin is reluctant to let him go for fear he will lose him again. Marlin realizes he must let him go and Nemo's plan succeeds. They return home and Nemo leaves for school with Marlin telling him to "go have an adventure".
As epilogue, the fishes in the dentist's fish tank are shown to succeed—after a fashion—in their last escape attempt. However they are still in their plastic bags, floating in the water. In the credit part it is shown they have left their bags.

Production

The movie was dedicated to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar Animator who died of melanoma in October 2002, seven months before the film was released.

Characters

See List of Finding Nemo characters

Reception

''Finding Nemo'' set a record as the highest grossing opening weekend for an animated feature, making $70 million (surpassed in 2007 by ''Shrek the Third''). With a total domestic gross of $339.7 million, ''Nemo'' was, for a time, the highest grossing animated film of all time, eclipsing the record set by ''The Lion King''. However, about a year later, ''Shrek 2'' surpassed ''Finding Nemo's domestic gross. By March 2004, ''Finding Nemo'' was one of the top ten highest-grossing films ever, having earned over $850 million worldwide.
The film's prominent use of clownfish prompted mass purchase of the animals for children's 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.^[3] As of 2004, in Vanuatu, clownfish were being caught on a large scale for sale as pets, motivated by the demand.^[4]
At the same time, the film had a central theme that "all drains lead back to the ocean" (A main character escapes from imprisonment 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''.^[5] 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 occurs.)^[6]
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."
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. [1]^[7]
Queensland, Australia also used Finding Nemo to draw tourists to promote its state for vacationers.^[8]

Legal challenges

In late 2003, the French children's book author Franck Le Calvez was angered by Disney, claiming that the story and the characters were stolen from his book ''Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown'' (Pierrot the Clownfish). The idea of Pierrot was protected in 1995 and the book was released in France in November 2002.^[9] Franck Le Calvez and his lawyer, Pascal Kamina, demanded from Disney a share of the profits from merchandising articles sold in France. In March 2004, Le Calvez and Kamina lost the lawsuit.^[10] Two years later, in February 2005, a New Jersey dentist named Dennis G. Sternberg filed suit against Disney/Pixar, alleging they had plagiarised his concept for a film entitled ''Peanut Butter the Jelly Fish,'' which he had discussed with Andrew Stanton in the 1990s.^[11] Sternberg soon dropped the lawsuit, saying he could not afford to lose.

Awards

The film received many awards, including:

★ An Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

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

★ Saturn Awards for Best Animated Film and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen Degeneres

★ Seven different Annie Awards in multiple categories
''Finding Nemo'' was also nominated for:

★ Three additional Academy Awards (Original screenplay, Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds; Achievement In Music Written For Motion Pictures (Original Score); Achievement In Sound Editing)

★ Two Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen DeGeneres

★ Three additional Saturn Awards

★ Three additional Annie Awards

★ A BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay

★ A Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

★ Two MTV Movie Awards

''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.Finding Nemo - The Musical, ''Walt Disney World Magic''. 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.^[12] Tony Award-winning director Peter Brosius signed on to direct the show, with Michael Curry, who designed puppets for Disney's phenomenally 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 "[T]he 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."^[13] 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."
The half-hour show (which is performed four times daily) went into previews at the Theater in the Wild on November 5, 2006, and opened on January 24, 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.
It is unknown whether the show will be expanded and transfer to Broadway, though Walt Disney Parks & Resorts executive Ann Hamburger has said that "she would love for that to happen." ''Nemo'' is notable for being the first non-musical animated film to which Disney has added songs to produce a stage musical.

Attractions

★ Epcot: ''The Seas with Nemo & Friends'' (2007) containing ''Turtle Talk with Crush'' (2004)

★ Disney's California Adventure: ''Turtle Talk with Crush'' (2005)

★ Disney's Animal Kingdom: 'Finding Nemo - The Musical' (2007)

★ Disneyland: ''Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage'' (2007)

★ Walt Disney Studios Park: ''Crush's Coaster'' (2007)

See also

★ List of animated feature-length films

★ List of computer-animated films

References

1. DVD continues spinning success Mike Snider
2. http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/the_complete_list.html
3. Acquiring Nemo Elizabeth Jackson
4. Vanuatu - Saving Nemo Mark Corcoran
5. Company Warns of 'Grinding Nemo', ''FoxNews.com''/AP, 2003-06-06.
6. Coastal sewage treatment plants operated by Sydney Water North Head and Bondi would be the closest sewage treatment plants to the location of the film. Further explanation of "primary" sewage treatment can be found here.
7. Nemo-led recovery hope Peter Mitchell
8. Sydney ignores Nemo Anthony Dennis
9. Disney 'copied my idea for Nemo' claims French author Kim Willsher
10. Author loses against Disney's 'Nemo'
11. NJ diving dentist says 'Nemo' film was his idea
12. Hernandez, Ernio. "Avenue Q Composer Lopez Co-Pens Musical Finding Nemo for Disney," ''Playbill.com'' (2006-04-10).
13. Swimming with big fish Elizabeth Maupin

External links

★ Official Disney site

★ Pixar's Finding Nemo site

★ Finding Nemo The Musical Documentary

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★ Finding Nemo Sound Clips

★ What Kind of Creature Is It? Finding Nemo - Cast of Characters