As the final credits rolled for Finding Nemo (2003), the song “Beyond the Sea,” covered by Robbie Williams, accompanies the list of those who worked on the film.  I briefly listened, but while doing so, an often examined (on my part alone, perhaps) facet of these films filtered into my brain.  In general, I find that adults who take younger people to see these kinds of movies come away from them telling themselves that the humor is subtly aimed at them instead of their kids.  This is an odd position to which to cling, and it was made odder still by the insertion of this tune.  Actually, its presence probably feeds into the notion that they are made for an older audience since I do not know what child would hear it and be moved in any way.  It would be apparent why the song makes sense for such a flick, but are parents eager to get their unruly charges out of the theater (or if they even make it to this point streaming it from home) hearing the melody and feeling like, yeah, that part is just for me?  I suppose I have answered my original question as to whom Disney is appealing to with their animation, but that is not to whom they are marketed.  Either way, it is a mad world, or ocean, and you just have to keep swimming.

Before it is time to start Finding Nemo, we meet the titular clownfish’s (voiced by Alexander Gould) parents, Coral (voiced by Elizabeth Perkins) and Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks).  Near their sea anemone home at the edge of the reef, they have small horde of fish eggs that they expect to soon hatch.  In their ecstasy over the expected domestic bliss, Coral journeys a little too far into open water and is confronted by a barracuda.  She does not survive the resulting chase, and neither do the eggs, save for one.  Marlin names it Nemo, which had been the one name Coral had come up with for their army of hatchlings.  Some time passes, and Nemo is ready to go to what passes for school in this underwater ecosystem.  It involves a number of other younger reef dwellers climbing onto the back of Mr. Ray (voiced by Bob Peterson), a knowledgeable spotted eagle ray, who spouts off random facts.  It is hard for Marlin to let Nemo go for a variety of reasons.  First, Nemo has an underdeveloped fin, which Marlin fears will make it hard for his son to keep up with the others.  This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that Marlin is terrified of the larger ocean, instilling in Nemo a mistrust of the unknown.  Heedless of these warnings, Nemo tries to impress his classmates by swimming farther away from the edge of the reef than the others dare.  When Marlin hears of the class’s destination, he hurries to the rim to bring Nemo back to safety.  Nemo is annoyed by his dad’s overprotectiveness, going so far as to tell Marlin that he hates him.  Nemo then defiantly makes his way out to a boat anchored nearby to touch its hull, which had been the original dare between the hatchlings.  Before he can make it back, divers from the vessel trap him in a net.  A horrified Marlin, trying to blink dazzles out of his eyes from another human visitor that snapped his picture, takes off in the wake of the boat to no avail.  When he is inevitably outpaced, he turns to other fish to help point him in the right direction.  For better or worse (usually worse), the fish that he ends up with is Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres).  She is friendly and wants to help, but her difficulty with her short-term memory makes her all but impossible to be of any real assistance.  Before Marlin can say otherwise, they are swept up by Bruce (voiced by Barry Humphries), a great white shark who brings the tiny fish to a sort of recovery meeting for other predators trying to wean themselves off from other gill breathers . . . which takes place inside a sunken submarine . . . surrounded by sea mines.  Huh?!  Anyway, one of the divers’ masks ends up floating down to this area, which has the address of the owner.  Somehow, Dory is able to read, and it gives Marlin a destination.  All they have to do now is to survive blood frenzied sharks, angler fish, a vast bloom of jellyfish (vocabulary is fun!), fast moving ocean currents, and being trapped inside the mouth of a blue whale, all to improbably make it to Sydney Harbor.  As they face these adventures, Nemo has his own challenges to overcome.  The address on the diving mask is a dentist’s office.  He is deposited in an aquarium that overlooks the chair in which Dr. Philip Sherman’s (voiced by Bill Hunter) patients sit.  The other pets in the enclosure, while strangely fascinated by dentistry, give Nemo the dreadful news that he is to be given to Darla (voiced by LuLu Ebeling).  She is Dr. Sherman’s niece, and she is known as a fish killer.  Nemo decides he needs to escape, and it is Gill (voiced by Willem Dafoe), who comes up with the plan.  This older fish had once lived in the ocean, too, and wants to help the younger one be reunited with his father.  Gill’s scheme is, frankly, convoluted, involving breaking their tank’s filter, forcing Dr. Sherman to put them in bags outside of the glass to clean it, and then rolling those out the window and into the water.  The first attempt at this goes awry, but when it looks like Nemo’s fate is sealed, he puts forth a second effort and stops the pump.  Of course, Dory and Marlin arrive in the harbor on the appointed day, and conveniently run into a pelican named Nigel (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), who happens to know Nemo’s location.  Unfortunately, the chaotic fly-by they do in the office makes it look like Nemo is dead.  Nemo had just been playing opossum, as the old saying goes, to avoid being taken by Darla. Eventually, he is sent down the drain and into the ocean where he is reunited with an overjoyed Marlin.  They have one more obstacle to overcome in the form of a fishing boat, but eventually end up back at their reef.

At the end of my introduction to Finding Nemo, I used the phrase “keep swimming.”  Admittedly, it is one I borrowed from the film.  It is a great thing to remind Christians, or anyone, when facing difficulties.  My main concern is with followers of God, though.  Sadly, I see so many turn to other sources of relief than God, seeing His assistance as not immediate enough for their needs.  However, if you can just keep swimming, or praying as the case may be, one way or the other God will reward you for your perseverance.  Still, such an analysis is low hanging fruit when it comes to this movie.  Instead, I would like to focus my Catholic energies on Dory.  A few months ago, I downloaded the Hallow app on my phone.  Since then, I have turned to it on a daily basis for a couple of things, one of which is for their saint of the day. Dory’s forgetfulness clicked a memory of a fairly recent entry, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque.  She went to St. Claude de la Colombière, telling the priest that God had chosen him to be her spiritual director.  St. Claude reacted as many of us would, that is to say skeptically.  Wanting confirmation, he asked her to pray that the Almighty might reveal to St. Mary St. Claude’s last sin.  When next they spoke, she reported that Jesus said that He could not remember.  That may sound like a cop-out, but there is a Biblical basis for it, not to mention it being an indication of God’s love for us.  It is not necessarily that God forgets, which would be impossible for Him.  Instead, it is that He so far removes the stain of sin from us when we Confess and do penance that it is like forgetting.  Again, He does this for love of us.  Dory is a more extreme case, and has nothing to do with Reconciliation.  However, her nature is a pale imitation of the kind of process about which I am talking.  There is a moment when she gets suspicious of Marlin following her, despite moments earlier telling him to do so.  Yet, she gets over that suspicion almost quickly as it arrives, and greets him with warmth.  If only we could be so forgiving to our enemies.  God does it for us, at any rate.

Now that I have seen Finding Nemo, I think I might be just about all caught up with Disney films.  There are probably a couple that I still have yet to see, but I am not pining to view them.  Since I have ridden the ride at Epcot, and gotten the rest of the story through Mouse osmosis, I found myself drifting off while seeing it.  So, whatever.