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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Thursday, June 5, 2003
01:38 - One Disaster After Another Underwater

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My dad will get that title.

I just saw Finding Nemo, and I found it surprisingly... well, I won't say bad, because it wasn't, and I won't say dull, because it wasn't, and I won't say flat, because it wasn't. I don't know. I guess I just found it sort of un-Pixar. Which is odd, because on balance it has everything we have all come to expect from a Pixar movie. Extremely original characters. Kooky cerebral humor. Gorgeous animation. Emotional twists. A blast-from-the-past animated short from Pixar's early days preceding the movie. Silly surprises in the credits.

But even so... there just seemed to be something missing. It wasn't the Randy Newman songs, because none of the Pixar movies aside from the Toy Stories had any. It wasn't the wry cockeyed cultural references and visual memes, because there were plenty of those. It wasn't the visuals; they're easily more stunning here than ever before, and even the humans look plausible now for the first time. It wasn't the effortlessly tidy writing, with plot elements forever closing loops and tying off loose ends; that was here in spades. It wasn't the buddy-movie central plot trunk with the colorful gaggle of supporting characters, because they're more colorful this time around than even in A Bug's Life (plus it's a single-father-and-lesbian buddy pair, which is guaranteed comedic gold, not the potential romance that they keep almost flirting with). All the ingredients are there.

But for lack of anything more substantive, I'd have to say that what's missing is magic. There's just some spark of inspiration that just isn't there this time around.

Something about world-building, possibly. All the previous Pixar movies spent a great deal of time luxuriating in the kooky details of a universe of the writers' own creation. The monsters in Monsters, Inc. use a three-decimal-place monetary system and power their cities off the collected screams of kids, collected with the help of a wholly industrialized system of magic interdimensional doors. The ants in A Bug's Life put on kindergarten plays about circus bugs from the Big Dump City, where everybody drinks from palm-sized droplets held together by surface tension. And don't get me wrong-- Finding Nemo has these things. But somehow they're just not as easy and natural as they have been in the past; I didn't find myself giggling helplessly at the idea of tiny Pac-Man-ghost-shaped squids "inking" when they get startled, or of fish toddlers clinging to a bat ray for "school" (honestly, I expected more of a pun there). They seemed forced. Like the brainstorming sessions ran dry early in the evening, and the writers sat there glumly muching pizza as they bulldozed their way through a quota of gags under the merciless whip of the approaching dawn.

There was something "not quite right" about the delivery of the characters. There was this bizarre, repeated tendency for characters to drop into tuneless, singsongy doggerel. The bat-ray teacher does it to a bewildering, Tom-Bombadil-esque degree. Dory does it as part of her demented persona. Half the time, you get the feeling that it's because these are supposed to be fish, without cognitive reasoning skills, crooning like Furbys to themselves... but then the rest of the time they're perfectly human in character, and the singing sounds almost kinda creepy. I didn't find it annoying, per se... I found it more puzzling, like I was missing something critical to my understanding of the characters' motivations. I kept feeling like I was supposed to be getting more engaged in the story, more attached to the characters, like I helplessly did-- against all my conscious efforts-- to Boo in Monsters, Inc. But there was nothing in Finding Nemo to compare with the ludicrous semi-dark silliness of Sully's facial expressions as he watches what he thinks is Boo getting mangled in the garbage disposal. Instead, it's... well, one disaster after another underwater. Just a bunch of linear little misadventures, plodding toward an inevitable conclusion without any unforeseen major twists. No Stinky-Pete-turning-turncoat. No deliciously heart-pounding mechanical bird scaring grasshoppers out of their exoskeletons. Just some whimpering utterances of "Oh, thank goodness"-- to which my reaction wasn't emotionally flushed relief, but "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Can we go home now?"

Yes, there were some great bits in there-- the concept is ambitious and commendable, a single father fighting himself in order to let go of his son and let him find his own way in the world. The interstitial philosophizing along these lines works well, even with the crucial wisdom falling from the lips of a dazed-and-confused surfer sea turtle. But overall the premise just seemed stretched too far; rather than feeling like I'd just seen a tiny sliver of a universe which could be infinitely explored, as with all previous Pixar films, this one didn't leave me with any desire to see any of the rest of the ocean. Yeah, it's dangerous out there, but that's not the point. Neither is the fact that it's shockingly beautiful; that's not it either. It's simply that I felt I'd seen it all right here, on an overpriced tour that dumped me unceremoniously into a gift shop at the end.

Has Pixar lost its touch? Nah, I don't think so. I don't think Finding Nemo is a bad movie, either. It's just that I've come to expect miracles from Pixar, and now even a good movie seems like a letdown.

Oh-- and what was up with those "reformed sharks" and that one wisecrack? "Blasted humans-- think they own the whole world!" "They're probably Americans!" Someone grinding an axe in there somewhere, eh?

UPDATE: James Sentman also notes that the movie was simply too dark and scary for the kids in the audience. There weren't any in my 10:30 showing, but I see what he means. Mom and all the kids getting shockingly eaten before the title credits? Screen-filling, gravelly-voiced, knife-toothed, violently-thrashing sharks? Sure, they looked great, but the writers definitely didn't seem to know what age group they were playing to.

Plus I just can't see any kids-- or adults, even-- being able to really connect with the character concepts. When Dory first said, "I suffer from short-term memory loss"-- I thought, oh great... this is going to be one loooong movie.

Previous Pixar movies had the benefit of being aimed at kids but thoroughly enjoyable for adults too. This one, however, sacrifices its kiddie appeal for the sake of some darker plot elements, but manages to forfeit its adult watchability as well.

Maybe it's because Lasseter only had Executive Producer credits on this one, and apparently wasn't any more deeply involved?


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© Brian Tiemann