This film is stunning not in what it tries to say or even for some brilliant new concept it explores. This film is not easily appreciated by older film lovers and people out to see sophisticated drama or over-the-top comedy. The reason this film gets my highest recommendation is because like all great animated films, it completely immerses us in a strange new world. This world may not be comfortable or safe but at least we are there instead of here. What I mean is, anytime a film can create such a completely convincing world and tell a story so well that the audience itself actually feels they are in this new world, that film has achieved greatness. All of the Pixar films thus far have done a great job at creating another world with characters, rules and qualities all their own. Up until now, however, the Pixar films have had a more familiar setting and environment to deal with. It’s relatively easy for us viewers to imagine what it’s like to shrink down to the size of an ant or to pretend that there really are monsters in the closet. That’s all familiar territory. In Finding Nemo, however, the characters live in a world that most of us have never seen and that humankind in fact knows the least about out of all the ecosystems. The film begins in a rather disturbing opening scene in which the life of a little clownfish named Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) is forever altered when his wife and 200 babies are eaten by a barracuda. All of this is off screen, of course, and although it sounds like an awful thing for little kids to watch, it has been done before (I never have forgiven that damn redneck that shot Bambi’s mom). Anyway, Marlin is left with just one surviving baby who he names Nemo and who is promises he will never let anything happen to. Nemo grows up very sheltered and protected since Marlin is understandably a little neurotic about protecting his son. On Nemo’s first day of school however, Nemo swims out a little too far to try to prove his bravery to his friends and ends up getting scooped up by a scuba-diving dentist. Marlin is horrified but relentlessly swims off to find and rescue his son. Meanwhile, little Nemo ends up in a dentist’s office in an aquarium full of exotic and hilarious fish. There’s Gill (Willem Dafoe), the rebellious leader who is constantly plotting to break out of the aquarium; Bloat (Brad Garrett), a blowfish puffs up and floats away every time he gets agitated; and Peach (Allison Janney), an oddball starfish who stays glued to the glass and pops her face off occasionally to talk to the other fish. Most of the movie’s action, however, focuses on Marlin and a blue fish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) that he meets along the way. Dory is a gracious and worldly fish who is glad to help Marlin find his son but has one small problem: she has about a thirty second memory span. This problem causes a lot of grief for Marlin and most of the laughs in the movie. DeGeneres handles this role brilliantly and is hilarious always. The fun in this movie is in the journey so I won’t reveal too much of what happens along the way but by far the funniest characters in the movie are the seagulls. Every other animal in the movie, including the seagulls’ nemesis, the pelican (played by Geoffrey Rush), can talk and have extensive vocabularies even if some, like the whales, talk a little slower. But the seagulls are shown to be the pea-brains of the movie with their one word vocabulary- “mine!” These guys just cracked me up so much and I can’t really explain it. Maybe it’s because I hate seagulls so much and I love that someone is making fun of them or maybe they just really are hilariously stupid characters. They are, however, just one of the many groups and characters that we meet along the way in this movie and each one provides a different element to the overall experience of the film. When you walk out of Finding Nemo, you feel as if you really have been through an amazing experience that you will never forget. We experience things with the characters and we root for them all the way. This is what a great children’s film is; funny characters, a good message, a few scares, a couple of real-life situations, and an environment that draws everyone, kids and adults, right through the screen. Pixar has really outdone itself this time and I would expect this film to be the top contender for next year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar. Don’t miss the boat on this one; Finding Nemo is one of the best films of the year and another instant classic for Disney and Pixar.