Finding Nemo

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * *)

How would a pelican sound if it could talk? How about a giant green sea turtle? And seagulls?

Actually, while watching Finding Nemo the answer to the last is the one which had me hooting out loudest - mainly because for all the creative work its makers have done in matching species to voices, the answer to what gulls are really saying is brilliantly simple.

Any small children you take along with you - and frankly, as with all Pixar animated features, it's not compulsory y'know - will be driving you up the wall with their gull impressions until this comes out on video.

And this one does seem to aim younger than previous Pixar efforts, especially at the beginning with its Bambi-like set-up, which can make you worry that the film might soon be suffering from terminal Disney-itis.

Fortunately, it's soon away out of its gooey patch into a typical Pixar story about how very small creatures travel a very far way to rescue the ones they love.

In this case, Marlin, a clownfish and a neurotic single dad to Nemo, must get from the Great Barrier Reef to an aquarium in a Sydney dentist's office where his son has ended up after being netted and transported.

That's a long way for a tiny fish.

Well, two tiny fish - along for the ride is Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang who suffers from short-term memory loss (a joke that, mostly care of the comedian's vocal gymnastics, doesn't wear thin).

There are encounters both inevitable (the Jonah's view of a whale) and not - a trio of sharks who have formed a support group to avoid being "mindless eating machines".

Helped by Barry Humphries' hilarious turn as the Great White called Bruce (nice Jaws reference that), it's an episode you suspect could turn into an animation franchise of its own.

Meanwhile, young Nemo and his fellow aquarium inmates attempt to plot his escape.

There's a deadline looming - Nemo's up for adoption by the dentist's niece, a kid who just doesn't have the knack to keep pets alive.

Of course, the visuals are brilliant and disconcerting with their ability to set what are still cartoon characters against a convincing undersea world.

It's as if having all your characters in constant liquid-motion, Pixar have set themselves some sort of animated highwater mark.

They've reached it. It's wondrous.

The story is less so in its attempts to say something about being over-protective to kids and about single-parent families, and it takes just a little too long in doing it.

But with the inevitably action-packed finale - featuring those gulls and a pelican called Nigel - Finding Nemo reels in another Pixar triumph of entertainment and animated wizardry.

Voices: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Rush, Willem Dafoe

Director Andrew Stanton

Rating: PG Running Time: 104 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas