DeGeneres infuses what could have been a one-note role with an irresistible enthusiasm and playfulness.
The character, who speaks in daffy non sequiturs but knows enough to tutor Marlin in the funny language of whales, is the movie's comic center. But once he takes to the open water, he is unstoppably courageous and resourceful in his quest to find the boy.Īlong the way he teams up with Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), an inveterately cheery blue tang with a severe case of short-term memory loss that causes many complications. Initially he seems the least likely candidate to risk his life to save anyone. Each has to learn to trust and respect the other, but to arrive at a better understanding both must endure any number of harrowing trials.Īt home, Marlin, a well-meaning worrywart, addresses his son in the nagging whine of a nervous milquetoast. In its broadest outlines, ''Finding Nemo,'' which opens nationwide today, is an upbeat, sentimental fable about a fearful father and a rebellious son who recklessly breaks away. Leaving the security of the Great Barrier Reef where he and his dad live comfortably inside a sea anemone, he swims out to inspect a distant boat and is scooped up in a scuba diver's net. Nemo, a squeaky-voiced youngster who was born with one fin smaller than the other, disappears on his first day of school after defying his father with a daredevil stunt. Before his journey is over, he finds himself trapped in the mouth of a blue whale with only moments to spare before it takes a big, lethal gulp, and pursued by a flock of sea gulls that are almost as menacing as the birds in Alfred Hitchcock's avian nightmare. Their hair-raising life-or-death chase takes them around a sunken submarine and through a minefield.īruce is only the most fearsome of the predators encountered by Marlin, a nervous, overprotective father who sets out over the great, wide ocean to find his lost son Nemo (Alexander Gould). In the movie's scariest scene, the drifting scent of blood drives him into a ravenous frenzy in which his eyes turn black and he lunges after Marlin (Albert Brooks), the meek little orange-and-white clown fish he has been regaling with his recovery spiel. ''Fish are friends, not food,'' goes the mantra he repeats in an unctuously imperious drawl whenever he's tempted to gobble up a passing morsel.īut sharks will be sharks, and Bruce's resolution is awfully shaky. An ominous hulk, with eyes like gleaming bullets and a savage jack-o'-lantern grin, Bruce has adopted a 12-step program to curb his insatiable appetite for other fish. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.Among the finned creatures who wriggle and dart through Disney/Pixar's sparkling aquatic fable, ''Finding Nemo,'' the most comically inspired is a great white shark named Bruce (the voice of Barry Humphries), who glides through the ocean flanked by two menacing sidekicks, Anchor (Eric Bana), a hammerhead, and Chum (Bruce Spence), a mako. Published online December 13 in the journal Conservation Letters. Extinction risk and conservation bottlenecks for charismatic marine species. Their study was published online today in the journal Conservation Letters.Ĭitation: McClenachan, L., A. They evaluated extinction risk with the IUCN Red List assessments conservation efforts in part by using the CITES database.
Led by Loren McClenachan, who has also done impressive research on shifting baselines in the Florida Keys, the authors used a series of online databases for their research, including the World Register of Marine Species, Fishbase, and the Tree of Life to create lists of the marine species. Despite a demonstrated need for conservation action, regulation of trade in endangered marine species is severely deficient for those with high economic value, like sharks. Clownfish aren't safe now, either, and they certainly weren't in 2003 after the film's release when local RotoRooter dispatch centers received calls from families whose kids flushed the fish after watching the movie.
Seahorses (“Sheldon”) are the most threatened group of bony fish in Finding Nemo, with two in five species at risk of extinction. The authors examined the extinction risk of 1,568 species within 16 families of well-known marine animals represented in the 2003 Academy Award-winning animated film.Īll species of marine turtles (“Squirt” and “Crush”) and more than half of all hammerhead sharks (“Anchor”), mackerel sharks (“Bruce” and “Chum”), and eagle rays (“Mr.
One in every six species related to characters in the movie Finding Nemo is threatened by extinction, according to a new study out today.