Finding Nemo Message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8vZHdKzesg

Growing up, many children have their eyes glues to the television, watching their favorite cartoon and animated characters in movies that they think are just for pure entertainment.  To adults and older children, not only are these movies entertaining, but they also include a hidden positive message that the director of the movie is trying to get across to the children through the use of pathos and keying on the viewer’s emotions, without ruining the entertainment for the children.  As a result of this message, many clichés also come in the movie because it is hard for the children to understand the message without the cliché.  Sometimes, the message out ways the cliché and other times it does not. 

The movie Finding Nemo is a notorious children’s movie that almost all ages love to watch.  Its animation shows the life of a father clown fish, Marlin, who is searching for his only son, Nemo, becasue a scuba diver took him away right before his very eyes.  Not only is the movie extremely entertaining to all ages, but it also includes the hidden message that you need to use teamwork in order to achieve your goals.  In this case, it was Marlins goal to find Nemo and bring his only son home. 

The directors Lee Unkrich and Andrew Stanton are able to communicate the message in many scenes throughout the movie.  One of the first ways they are able to communicate the message is by everyone helping Marlin try to find Nemo and no one helps him more than the blue fish, Dory, who suffers from short term memory loss and can never remember anything that just happened right before.  In fact, Dory can read English, which helps them find the address of where Nemo is when they find the scuba mask left behind by one of the divers, which included its return address.  Even though Marlin tries to reject Dory’s help, Dory always seems to stick by Marlin’s side on his mission to travel the ocean to get to Sydney Australia and find his son Nemo.  On their way to Sydney, they receive help from a group of sea turtles that take them along the East Australian Current until they reach their destination. 

Along the way, almost everyone in the sea begins to hear about the story of Marlin trying to find Nemo through the help and gossip of other fish all telling the story of what Marlin is going through.   This leads to them meeting the friendly pelican, Nigel, who knows of Marlin’s story and knows exactly where Nemo is and he takes them there.  Marlin meeting so many fish makes him learn a lot about himself by learning about the other fish and seeing “what they take for granted, how they behave with others, and how they react to a crisis” (Ideology 406).  Marlin finding the location of Nemo would not have been possible with out the help of everyone around him.  Nemo also experiences a lot of help from the fish that he is in the tank with.  The fish try to help him escape from the tank before he is taken home by a terror of a child that is known for shaking the bag holding the fish so much that the fish dies.  Without their help, Nemo would not have been able to escape from the fish tank and be able to reconnect with his father.  When Nemo finally is reunited with his father, they are in the middle of a large group of fish.  The large group of fish, Nemo, and Dory are all scooped up by a giant net by a fishing boat to be taken back to port for sale.  Nemo is able to save everyone by telling everyone to work as a team and everyone swim to the bottom of the ocean floor together until the big net breaks.  This is when Marlin finally realizes how important teamwork really is.

Along with having a positive message, the movie Finding Nemo also has some clichés.  The largest cliché are the characters involved in the movie.  Marlin is a very scared fish that is even more over

protective as a father.  What is cliché is that even though he is one of the most over protective fathers, a scuba diver still takes Nemo.  For Dory, she cannot remember anything, including Nemo’s name, yet she can read English and remember the address perfectly.  In the end, she is the one that finds Nemo and brings him back to his father.  Finally, Nemo was born with an extra small fin on one of his sides, making it very hard for him to swim.  All of this combined makes for the perfect, cliché, inspiration story.

In my opinion, the positive message greatly out weighs the clichéness in the movie.  This is why I am giving Finding Nemo five slurpees for being a children’s movie with a positive message.