Finding Nemo

“Finding Nemo” has all of the usual pleasures of the Pixar animation style–the comedy and wackiness of “Toy Story” or “Monsters Inc.” or “A Bug’s Life.” And it adds an unexpected beauty, a use of color and form that makes it one of those rare movies where I wanted to sit in the front row and let the images wash out to the edges of my field of vision.

The movie takes place almost entirely under the sea, in the world of colorful tropical fish–the flora and fauna of a shallow warm-water shelf not far from Australia. The use of color, form and movement make the film a delight even apart from its story.

Throughout, the film is absolutely drunk with the hallucinogenic color and infinite variety of its undersea world, and dazzles us with computer-generated animation that has never looked quite so boldly exotic or shimmeringly beautiful.

More or less,”Finding Nemo” is a pleasure for grown-ups. There are jokes we get that the kids don’t, and the complexity of Albert Brooks’ neuroses, and that enormous canvas filled with creatures that have some of the same hypnotic beauty as–well, fish in an aquarium. They may appreciate another novelty: This time the dad is the hero of the story, although in most animation it is almost always the mother.