I'm a big fan of Pixar, although I must confess, that Monsters Inc. was a slight disappointment for me. While I was entertained by it, it felt more like a movie made strictly for the kids. The Toy Story films and even a Bug's Life were a little edgier, providing doses of humor and dialogue for the adults in the audience, as well as the little ones. Finding Nemo is clearly the best looking Pixar film to date, and the underwater vistas lend themselves beautifully to computer animation. Story wise, I enjoyed Finding Nemo much more then Monsters Inc. and A Bug's Life, but it isn't quite as imaginative as the Toy Story films. Still, this picture is far and away the most entertaining of the big summer movies thus far and it will most certainly make my best of list come the end of the year.

In this charming adventure, Albert Brooks plays a fish named Marlin, a loving father who's life is plunged into complete and utter chaos when his only son is plucked from the sea by a fisherman, and thrown into an entirely new environment. Frantically, Marlin bans with another fish (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres), and the two journey across the sea in hopes that they might rescue the adventurous youngster who now resides in a fish aquarium with an assortment of other characters including a bitter and tough as nails Angel fish (voiced by Willem Dafoe) and a happy go lucky starfish (voiced by Alison Janney). Visually, Finding Nemo is absolutely breathtaking, creating an underwater world unlike anything you've ever seen.

The characters are all well drawn and perfectly capture the spirit of their acting counterparts. The cast is picture perfect. The neurotic Albert Brooks is hilarious as Marlin, the overly protective father. He is given the opportunity to improvise his comic genius but never becomes irritating. In Monsters Inc., Billy Crystal went too far and that was one of my problems with that picture. Ellen Degeneres is a scream as a fish with short term memory loss. She provides the film with many of it's funniest moments including a hilarious sequence in which she attempts to speak to a school of whales using a shrewd whale dialect.

Like Bambi and The Lion King, Finding Nemo isn't afraid to get a little edgy, and an early moment in this picture was surprisingly dark, but it was also honest. Like the best Disney pictures, Finding Nemo doesn't shy away from realism. And like the best of Disney pictures, Finding Nemo is also lively and colorful. I'd also like to give props to Pixar for not feeling compelled to bog this picture down with a bunch of overbearing musical numbers.

The story here is very simplistic but it has enough funny inside gags and witty dialogue to win everyone over. Take, for instance, a pack of nasty sharks, who's leader is named Bruce (something that Jaws fans everywhere will find hilarious.) Finding Nemo is extremely sweet, very funny, incredibly exciting, and visually stunning. It's also wonderfully voiced by a plethora of outstanding talent. Finding Nemo is an absolute treasure, and amongst the big, over hyped pictures released as of late, it is clearly the movie to beat this summer.