‘Finding Nemo’ 20th anniversary: Why the Disney/Pixar film just keeps swimming

Brian Rowe
·5 min read
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One of the biggest blockbuster hits of 2003 was the Pixar animated feature “Finding Nemo,” featuring the voice talents of Albert Brooks and Ellen Degeneres, and directed by Andrew Stanton. It was Pixar’s fifth feature following “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Toy Story 2” and “Monsters, Inc.” Released two decades ago on May 30, 2003, “Finding Nemo” was a box office smash, making $70 million its opening weekend in the United States and eventually reaching $380 million nationwide and $941 million worldwide. Read on for our celebration of the “Finding Nemo” 20th anniversary.

Most of the nation’s critics loved the film, including Moira MacDonald in Seattle Times, who said it’s “enchanting; written with an effortless blend of sweetness and silliness, and animated with such rainbow-hued beauty, you may find yourself wanting to freeze-frame it.” And Lou Lemenick in New York Post called it “a dazzling, computer-animated fish tale with a funny, touching script and wonderful voice performances that make it an unqualified treat for all ages.”

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With the rave reviews and stellar box office, “Finding Nemo” was on track to be a major awards player in early 2004, especially with the Animated Feature category at the time only being three years old. A Pixar submission hadn’t yet won that gold trophy, with “Shrek” winning Best Animated Feature in 2002 and “Spirited Away” taking the prize in 2003. But things were looking good for “Finding Nemo,” especially when it was nominated for Best Motion Picture Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes and won tons of critics’ prizes for Best Animated Feature. The movie won Best Animated Feature at the Critics Choice Awards, and it received two nominations at the BAFTA Awards — Best Original Screenplay and the Children’s Award for Best Feature Film. It was staying strong going into Oscar nominations morning.

At the 76th Academy Awards, “Finding Nemo” ultimately made it into four categories — Best Score for Thomas Newman, Best Sound Editing for Gary Rydstrom and Michael Silvers, Best Original Screenplay for Stanton, Bob Peterson and David Reynolds, and Best Animated Feature for Stanton. I would argue the biggest success for “Finding Nemo” at the Oscars was getting into the Best Original Screenplay category, which is almost always reserved for live-action fare. Prior to 2004, only two animated features had been nominated in either of the screenplay race at the Academy Awards — “Toy Story” and “Shrek.” Still to date, no animated feature has won in either screenplay category, but “Finding Nemo” making it in showed the academy’s enthusiasm for the film. It was never going to win Best Original Screenplay — this was the year of “Lost in Translation” and since that wasn’t going to win Best Picture or Best Director, Best Original Screenplay was practically guaranteed for Sofia Coppola.

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It was also the year of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” which swept all 11 categories it was nominated in, and therefore, Newman didn’t stand a chance in Best Score over Howard Shore for his work on Peter Jackson’s closing chapter of the epic trilogy. If Shore hadn’t been in the category, I do think Newman, who’s been nominated for 15 Oscars throughout the years and has still never won, could’ve taken this one over the scores to “Big Fish,” “Cold Mountain” and “House of Sand and Fog.” A category “Finding Nemo” didn’t have to compete with “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” was in Best Sound Editing, which gave the animated feature a chance, but “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” was the chosen one there, live-action films almost always preferred by academy voters in this category.

The one Oscar category “Finding Nemo” had in the bag was Best Animated Feature, where its only competition was the underperforming “Brother Bear” and the delightful French entry “The Triplets of Belleville.” In a less competitive year, “The Triplets of Belleville” might have won, given its enthusiastic reviews and creative animation style. But so often in Best Animated Feature these past 10 years, it’s ill-advised to vote against Pixar, because they win this category over and over again, and for good reason — their films do blockbuster business, receive strong critical notices, and are beloved by audiences the world over. “Finding Nemo” is one of the most heralded Pixar movies in history, and so a victory in Best Animated Feature was impossible to deny by the academy.

Pixar has gone on to win Best Animated Feature at the Oscars for “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL-E,” “Up,” “Toy Story 3,” “Brave,” “Inside Out,” “Coco,” “Toy Story 4” and “Soul.” It might be a surprise to you to learn that “Finding Dory,” the 2016 sequel to “Finding Nemo,” didn’t even receive an Oscar nomination; that year’s Best Animated Feature prize went to Disney’s “Zootopia.” The legacy for the Oscar-winning “Finding Nemo” has endured much better than its so-so sequel to be sure, and it’s still a favorite for many kids and adults to this day. When Stephen Witty in Newark Star-Ledger called it “a genuinely funny and touching film that has established itself as a timeless classic,” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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