Finding Nemo: Pros and Cons

When I was younger, I loved Finding Nemo. It was great movie about a lost fish and a father’s love, but as I grew up, I started noticing the small underlying messages hidden within the movie. Although I still love this movie, and I can quote majority of it, there are some negative aspects that I can understand some adults do not want their child knowing just yet.

Nemo is a great movie for children. Yes, there are some deeper meanings within the movie, but most likely children haven’t learned those deeper meanings and are just enjoying a movie about a lost fish. It sends a good message that a father will go thought many difficult obstacles to find his son. It also shows a single dad trying hard to raise his son. Being overprotective of his son, Marlin overcame his fear and swam miles and oceans to find Nemo. Despite Dory’s mental illness, Marlin came to accept Dory for who she really was and Nemo already accepted her for who she was when he met her and this really shows true friendship because they were able to overlook her disability. When Nemo was captured by the diver, he was put into a fish tank with other fish.

These fish are from all different places and they all had different experiences, with one common goal: they wanted to get out of the fish tank and into the ocean. They accepted Nemo, after an initiation, and they worked together to find their way out of the fish tank. Although Bruce, the great white shark, tried to eat Dory and Marlin, in the end they all became good friends and he even protects Nemo when he goes back to school. While they are in the trench, Dory tells Marlin to “just keep swimming” and this can be a great life lesson. It teaches kids perseverance.

For older teens, young adults and adults, Finding Nemo might not be a good movie because of the deeper meanings. For example, Dory has a mental illness and although it seems funny, it might seem that people are laughing at her mental disability. Even though she does help in the end. Nemo’s classmates pressure him to stray from the rest of the group so swim out in the open to touch a boat. He then disobeys his father and swims out into the open and gets kidnapped by some divers. This can teach kids to disobey their parents in some ways. Marlin, his father, repeatedly tells Nemo not swim out and touch the boat, but Nemo did anyway. This really sends a message about negative peer pressure. Dory and Marlin run into some sharks that are trying to be “vegetarians” and they say “Fish are friends, not food” but as soon as he smelled blood, Bruce, the leader, took off after them, hungry for blood. This teaches kids that people can pretend to be your friend.

Although this movie is great for children, perhaps older individuals will not like the underlying meanings of some parts of the movies. Yes, Dory has a mental disability, but her true friends overlooked that and accepted her for who she was. Furthermore, Bruce did try to eat his friends.