Pixar Keeps Swimming

There is always that one guy or girl in the movie theater with high tech 3D glasses propped on his or her nose, who reaches out into space as the fish breaks through the big screen and swims towards him or her. Then that person realizes how embarrassing that was, and quickly regroups.

It’s just more awkward when your kids catch you.

Whether you are watching “Finding Nemo” for the first or the fourteenth time, you can’t help but fall in love again with the story of widower-fish Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) and his son, Nemo (Alexander Gould), who resents his dad’s helicopter parenting.

When Nemo breaks his father’s strict rules, a scuba-diving dentist snatches him up for his office aquarium. Marlin breaks away from his fear of the unknown and swims all the way to Australia with amnesia-prone Dory, voiced wonderfully by Ellen DeGeneres. What ensues is a riveting adventure as Marlin doggedly follows the trail of his lost son, and as Nemo tries to escape his glass prison.

Pixar first showed “Finding Nemo” in 2003, but is re-releasing it this fall, apparently to catch the recent wave of 3D comebacks. In Pixar’s case, it lets the audience see if their childhood films can stand the test of time.

This is the power of Pixar: for a company that makes children’s movies, their films are never just for kids.

Pixar’s characters have incredible depth, and their growth over the story is eagerly watched by both children and their parents. Marlin’s journey is so engrossing, you can almost forget you’re cheering on an animated fish. When it comes down to it, there is no other current animation studio that can consistently exact such a powerful emotional response from its audience.

You can see the movie through the eyes of a child, laughing at the jokes and feeling sad when Marlin and Nemo are separated. You can see it as a teenager, and totally relate to Nemo’s frustration with his control-freak dad. Or you can see it as a parent, wishing Nemo could just understand how much his father loves him.

The details of even the most minor character add even greater depth to the vast sea. There is Bruce the shark who tries to eat Marlin and Dory during the shark equivalent of an AA meeting (“Fish are friends, not food”). However, he can still empathize with his prey’s story when he proclaims “I never knew my father!”

The range of incredibly compelling characters continue, notably including Crush, the surfer-dude sea turtle with an adorable turtle family. When Marlin asks Crush how he knew when his kids were ready to go out on their own, Crush delivers one of the deepest lines of the movie, in his own signature fashion. He replies: “Well, you never really know. But when they’ll know, you’ll know, you know?” Totally.

The spontaneous applause in the theater was well-deserved. Re-releasing “Finding Nemo” was Pixar’s successful attempt at making us forget about recent missteps (“Cars 2” comes to mind), and remind us of how they set the standard for animation nine years ago. And they can rest assured; all is forgiven and forgotten.