I haven’t been a parent as long as you both have, but this was my first time rewatching the film through a dad’s eyes, and it’d be silly of me to pretend it didn’t play differently this time - more harrowing, and more humbling too. Mary and Glenn, I’m eager to dive into this one with you, not just because “Finding Nemo” is a great family movie, but it’s also a pretty great movie about family. One of Pixar’s great strengths as a brand has always been its refusal to spare your emotions - that’s true if you’re a kid, and maybe doubly true if you’re an adult. The rest of the movie is nearly as traumatic: Not having seen it in a few years, I was startled anew by just how nonstop its perils are, how relentlessly it ushers poor Marlin and Dory (voiced by the splendidly matched Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres) from one near-death experience to the next. But I’m hard-pressed to think of another scene in the Disney/Pixar canon quite as emotionally unsparing as that “Finding Nemo” massacre, which has to set some sort of record for body count alone.
Then I actually sat down and watched “Finding Nemo” with my 3-year-old and found myself covering her eyes in the first five minutes, so as to spare her the sight of a hungry barracuda wiping out a defenseless family of clownfish, save the dad, Marlin, and one poor unhatched larva named Nemo.ĭisney has long been in the parent-killing business, as any traumatized “Lion King” fan will tell you. JUSTIN CHANG: After our recent run of Ultimate Summer Movie Showdown winners - the R-rated comedy of “Bridesmaids,” the visceral thrills of “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the nerve-shredding horror of “Alien” - I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to see this week’s crown go to a movie I could watch with my 3-year-old. Times film critic Justin Chang sat down with entertainment columnists Mary McNamara and Glenn Whipp to discuss the movie, the chords it strikes with parents and children, and why so many of the best Pixar movies speak to both. The #UltimateSummerMovie Showdown is underway, and voters have chosen “Finding Nemo” (2003) as their winner for Week 5, dedicated to movies first released in theaters from May 29-June 4 (between 19).
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