Finding Nemo is laced with smart humor and clever gags, and buoyed by another cheery story of mismatched buddies: a pair of fish voiced by Albert Brooks and Ellen DeGeneres.
The latest flood of wizardry from Pixar, whose productions, from Toy Story onward, have lent an indispensable vigor and wit to the sagging art of mainstream animation.
Visually, Finding Nemo is spectacular. The animators render theses scenes with exquisite detail and vibrant color, reaching beyond mere CGI-wizardry to artistry.
It looks great, of course: All the Pixar movies do. But the genius of those other movies lay in their actual stories -- stories as inspired as the animation.
Like Pixar's previous films, Finding Nemo mines humor from the oddities of an unknown world but stays grounded in a familiar one, finding recognizable elements of heartbreak and happiness amid the ink-jetting octopi and irritable flounders.
Finding Nemo is distributed by Disney, and it has what the most heartfelt Disney animated features used to have: rapturous imagery matched with real wit.