Nemo enters a new dimension

Finding Nemo 3D

Starring: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould Playing in English at:

Angrignon, Banque Scotia, Brossard, Cavendish, Colossus, Côte des Neiges, Kirkland,

Lacordaire, Marché Central, Sources, Sphèretech, Taschereau cinemas If you take a child under the age of 10 to a zoo, aquarium or pet store, and they catch sight of a familiar pattern or orange and white stripes, chances are very good they won’t call it an anemone-fish, a clownfish or even just a fish. It’s “Nemo.”

Often it’s the parents making this oceanic classification, for they’re just as likely to have spent many hours in front of a video playback of Disney/ Pixar’s Oscar-winning 2003 animated film.

Finding Nemo gets a re-release Friday in 3D, and there probably isn’t a better film for conversion than this one. To begin with, it will benefit hugely from what filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro dubs “the aquarium effect,” in which the third dimen- sion doesn’t pop from the screen so much as provide a window of depth.

But this is also a simple, beautifully crafted story of the bond between parent and child.

Finding Nemo stars the voices of Albert Brooks and Alexander Gould as Marlin and Nemo, fatherand-son clownfish who live in a coral reef on the edge of the continental shelf.

Although there are no musical numbers in the film, it features a sublime score by Thomas Newman, who would outdo himself with 2008’s WALL-E.

The film is a treasure trove of unexpected humour, from the showy — Nemo’s school-of-fish teacher tells the class, “We keep our sub-esophageal ganglion to ourselves!” — to the ridiculous, as when a dreaming Dory complains: “Sea monkeys stole my wallet.”

Full disclosure: I did not have a chance to sample the 3D version, but computer animation seems to have been made for this medium, and previous post-production work has been outstanding. I’m going to go out on a limb and quote the opening lines of the movie, uttered by Marlin as he looks out through what is now almost certainly an even deeper blue sea. “Wow. Wow. Wow.”