Treasures of the sea

The folks at Pixar Animation Studios have created yet another wondrous computer-animated… The folks at Pixar Animation Studios have created yet another wondrous computer-animated adventure.

“Finding Nemo” is their best-looking work to date. The human characters are still a little off, but everything under the sea looks magnificent. Screenfuls of colorful marine life – everything animated down to the freaking molecule – are almost an overload.

Single parent Marlin (Albert Brooks), actually a Clown Fish who – to the disappointment of everyone he meets – just isn’t funny, is overprotective of his son, Nemo. When Marlin tries to tag along on the boy’s first day of school, a frustrated Nemo ventures into open waters, where he’s snatched by a scuba diver and added to a fish tank in a dentist’s office. Marlin frantically teams up with Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a regal blue tang with no short-term memory, to scour the ocean in search of Nemo.

As always, Pixar lends its technology to an intelligent, funny, exciting script. The film doesn’t just look good – it is good. Heck, the “Nice Sharks Anonymous” meeting is one of the best comedy bits I’ve seen in any film in a while. And, even if “Nemo” never quite reaches the pitch of, say, the million-closet-doors finale of “Monsters, Inc.” or the airport conveyor belts sequence in “Toy Story 2,” it’s still got mayhem to spare.

Also typical of the studio, the voice work is top notch. Most notably, the film features a quintessentially nervous Albert Brooks performance – the best he’s given in years. Standouts from the immensely talented supporting cast include Barry Humphries as a shark named Bruce – a sly “Jaws” nod – and director Andrew Stanton as Crush, the turtle equivalent of Bill or Ted. Even DeGeneres steps up; she’s a perfect flighty fish.

Sorry, “Matrix,” “Finding Nemo” is this summer’s eye-popper.