A paean to parenthood and superb for sprogs, it's a perfect piece of storytelling. Managing to move without falling into the jaws of sentimentality, the picture thrills and frightens too.

Barry Humphries has a terrific cameo as a great white shark who's sworn off killing (Remember, fish are friends, not food!), while DeGeneres provides perfect timing and tone as Dory, whose short-term memory loss is a gag that never stops running. The splendour of natural history hit The Blue Planet is matched by the wit of the script and stars. Tasked with creating an undersea environment, the animators have excelled themselves, capturing textures, light, shade and movement that could be photo-real, were it not for the clever way the makers have subtly caricatured landscapes, as well as characters, lending a warm cartoonish quality to the stunning visuals. There is beauty and brilliance in every frame. How increasingly impressive the achievement, then, that Finding Nemo feels so fresh. have proved such critical and commercial hits. It's a familiar formula for the digi-drawn dynamics of Pixar, whose Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Meanwhile, Marlin bumps into a blue tang named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), and sets out to save his son.

Taken to a tank in a Sydney dentists, Nemo meets Gill (Willem Dafoe) and co - friendly fish who dream of escaping to the ocean. Smothered by pop's paranoia, he ventures away from the reef, but his dad's dread is justified when a passing diver whisks him away. Somewhere, under the sea, weak-finned clown fish Nemo (Alexander Gould) lives with his fretful father, Marlin (Albert Brooks). One word just about does the job: genius. Hilarious, exciting and endlessly inventive, Finding Nemo is an awesome aquatic animation which will exhaust the adjective store of even the most hyperbolic film hack (ahem).

Film finding nemo