In Finding Nemo
We Learn Why Marlin's So Overprotective

Finding Nemo begins with Marlin and his wife Coral, a pair of colorful clown fish, who have just moved into a new home in the coral reef, preparing for parenthood. Coral has laid hundreds of eggs in a protective cave-like spot near by their pink, swaying anemone.

They flirt with one another and remember the good times from their courtship. The couple talks about what names would be good for their babies and Coral mentions she likes the name Nemo, which Marlin casually says "sure."

Then Coral swims outside the anemone and suddenly freezes in fear. Marlin, not noticing, goes on with his jolly sweet talk with his wife. He then sees what has her so frightened: a deadly barracuda fish in the distance.

Coral swims frantically back to the anemone, but it's too late. The barracuda attacks and the next thing we see is Marlin laying down in the middle of his home, knocked out. He wakes up, hysterical that Coral is gone. Marlin goes straight to the cave where the eggs are hid, and they, too are all gone.

However, Marlin sees one egg left. He gently picks it up with his fin and if you're careful, you can see that the egg has a small crack on it, damaged by the barracuda attack. Marlin takes the egg with him and right away starts calling it Nemo, in honor of Coral's wishes.

The First Day of School is Unforgettable

Sometime later, Nemo begins his first day of school, much to his father's consternation. Marlin embarrasses and annoys Nemo with is overbearing hovering. The loss that Marlin suffered is compounded by the fact that Nemo has a tiny little fin on one side, much smaller than the other one.

This was likely due to the damage from Nemo's egg. While Nemo calls it his lucky fin, Marlin is concerned that it makes Nemo more vulnerable.

Once at the school, Marlin tries to talk Nemo into playing with the babies in the daycare section, where it shows a funny little scene of a baby fish falling down and bawling.

Nemo will have none of it and they get to the school area, where they all wait for the teacher and the grownups hang out together. Marlin, being a clown fish, is supposed to be funny and the other dads want to hear a joke, and Marlin tries to tell one but messes up miserably.

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Then the teacher of Finding Nemo, Mr. Ray, arrives the students all gather 'round and get onto his back as he takes them to the shelf, a drop-off where the reef ends and open ocean begins. The little fish are scared being so near the open water and Nemo is afraid because of all the warnings he'd gotten about ocean predators living there.

But soon, Nemo's friends start daring one another to swim a little ways out into the open water, and they take turns, one by one swimming out a little further than the other. Then they see a boat off in the distance and one of the little fish suggests that it's called a "butt". They are mystified by this new thing.

It's during this game that Marlin catches up and he is outraged that Mr. Ray took the students out to this area. Nemo is mortified and angry with his father for embarrassing him in front of his peers, so he boldly starts swimming toward the boat.

Everybody calls him to come back, and Marlin starts to threaten Nemo, to which he defies his father and touches the boat with his fin. Nemo starts to swim back, and he almost reaches the shelf when a HUGE scuba diver emerges with a camera and flashes the fish, scaring them silly.

The diver, looking like an enormous alien creature with weird noises (the breathing apparatus) and bubbles everywhere, scoops up Nemo into a net and takes him back on board the boat, where he's plopped into a plastic bag.

Marlin swims frantically after the boat as it starts to speed away, but the boat easily outpaces him and he loses track of it. Desperate, Marlin asks around to every fish he sees if they've seen the boat. He then asks a regal tang fish named Dory if he's seen the boat and she says yes, and they quickly swim in one direction. In Finding Nemo, Marlin soon discovers that Dory has short term memory loss and can't remember things that happened only moments before.

An Odd Duo Team Up

Marlin is ready to go on alone and is politely trying to rid himself of Dory's company when they are suddenly confronted with an enormous great white shark named Bruce.

Bruce is the leader of a group called Fish Friendly Sharks and he invites (forces) Marlin and Dory to come to a Fish Eater's Anonymous meeting with his fellow shark friends, Anchor and Chum.

But she gets bonked on the nose with the goggles and Bruce is right behind them. Some blood trails up into Bruce's nose and his eyes dilate to black and he can't stand it anymore and rushes after Dory and Marlin, wanting nothing else but to devour them.

Dory and Marlin both carry the goggles and swim frantically to escape from Bruce as Anchor and Chum both try and hold him back from his feeding frenzy.

The two find a place to hide, but Bruce accidentally sets off a torpedo, which detonates many of the depth charge bombs floating around the old sunken submarine.

Welcome to Life in a Fish Tank

Known as the Tank Gang, the fish in the aquarium introduce themselves. Gill is the leader of the group and he is a Moorish idol fish with deep scars and a ruined fin from a past escape attempt. Bloat is a puffer fish, and Jacques is a Pacific cleaner shrimp. Deb/Flo is a humbug damsel fish and Bubbles is a yellow tang. Then there is Gurgle, who is a germophobic royal gramma. Lastly, Peach is a pink starfish who clings to the side of the tank and she's my favorite; Peach is really ADORABLE!

The Tank Gang tell Nemo he is in Philip Sherman's dentist office and he also learns he's going to be the birthday present for the dentist's niece, Darla, who has a reputation for killing fish by shaking the bag too hard from her excitement. All the fish are terrified of Darla, a goofy looking little girl with a mouthful of metal braces.

Gill devises a plan for Nemo to help all of the fish escape back to the sea before Darla's birthday arrives. Gill and the other fish work out the plan with Nemo as he sadly misses his father and life in the ocean.

Sinking to New Lows

In the meantime, Marlin and Dory are snoozing after that long battle with the sharks and Marlin wakes up to discover that they're inside the scuba goggles.

But the old submarine, poised on the edge of the abyss of the deep sea trench, breaks in half and the two have to swim for their lives as the sub falls in their direction. During their escape, though, the scuba goggles fall to the dark murky depths of the deep sea.

After some encouragement from Dory, they both dive down, scared but determined to get those goggles back. The water gets colder and much, much darker. Soon neither Marlin nor Dory can see anything in the inky blackness.

But very soon they see a beautiful little light, and they become hypnotized by the light. But Marlin and Dory quickly learn that it's the lure of an angler fish, an alien-looking deep sea fish with huge, sharp teeth. The angler fish chases Marlin around while Dory tries to use the fish's lure light to read the label and it has a address in Sydney that she memorizes.

In Finding Nemo, they make their escape back up to shallower waters and Dory must keep repeating the address so she can remember it. Sydney is where Nemo was taken and they must get there quickly!

Marlin and Dory come across a school of fish who direct them by creating pictures and arrows with their bodies that they need to go via the Eastern Australian Current (EAC), which is like a super highway to Sydney. They also warn that to get to the current, they must go through the nearby trench, not over it.

Dory disagrees, but doesn't argue and they swim over the top, only to see why they were warned: they are surrounded by box jellyfish, thousands of them, pink and deadly poisonous. The tops of the jellyfish are not poisonous, though, and Dory treats the whole thing like a game, unknowingly bouncing gleefully on them, sending Marlin into a panic for her safety.

Marlin and Dory are nearly stung to death trying to get through the mass of swimming jellyfish and Dory did get stung rather badly. She got some scarring and was sick for awhile, but luckily they made it. Barely. They both pass out from exhaustion.

Fast Current, Fast News Story

The fish will be put into bags on the counter top and the fish plan to bump their bags out the window, continue across the street and then plop down into the ocean, free at last.

But the plan doesn't work out when the pebble Nemo tosses into the motor dislodges and begins sucking him back through the tube, to a spinning motor that could kill him. Nemo swims with all his strength and the other fish feed a viney-looking plant up into the tube to help pull Nemo out.

Gill feels terrible about putting Nemo in such danger for his own wishes to escape and promises not to ask him to do such a thing again. All the fish are sad, especially Nemo and Gill, for the one thing they want, freedom, seems impossible now.

Marlin wakes up to find himself among some sea turtles riding swiftly on the East Australian Current (EAC). In Finding Nemo, the turtles are a friendly, surfer talking bunch and he finds Dory fully recovered and having a terrific time.

Crush, the dad turtle, has a laid back attitude when it comes to his son Squirt's safety. It's a lesson for Marlin when he's uneasy about Squirt getting back onto the EAC with them.

During the ride, Marlin tells Crush and the other turtles the reason for his long and difficult journey. His story is so moving that word travels amongst the sea creatures way ahead of him, all the way to Sydney.

In Finding Nemo, one of the animals, a pelican named Nigel, happens to hear of the news, and since it's an interesting story, he goes to the dentist office to visit his friends in the fish tank. Nigel comes to the open window and tells the story of Marlin searching for his son Nemo before being shoo'd away by Dr. Sherman.

Make it Nasty

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The news that his dad is still looking for him renews Nemo's determination to get out. If his father's still looking for him and is on his way to Sydney, he needs to break free.

Nemo successfully stops the filter system from working this time and the fish happily wait for the tank water to turn gross, with Bloat getting a head start by belching loudly. I love Bloat!

Meanwhile, Marlin and Dory exit the EAC because they're near Sydney, but unsure which direction they need to go. Dory hears a whale song and she suddenly remembers she speaks whale! They see the figure of a whale far off in the distance.

Marlin thinks she's just being silly again and thinks nothing of it when she starts talking slowly and funny. In Finding Nemo, the whale has disappeared and Marlin becomes annoyed when Dory tries different whale species.

From behind them, silently, an enormous blue whale sucks them into it's enormous mouth as it chases after krill. Dory's not worried though. She keeps talking whale and she says that she understands the whale. Marlin believes that they're just dinner and there's no hope of escape.

However, Dory tells him that the whale told them to swim back toward the back of the whale's throat. Going against his doubts, Marlin finally trusts Dory and does what he tells her and the whale pushes Dory and Marlin out through its blow hole right out there in Sydney Harbor.

A bunch of seagulls see Marlin and Dory though, and start attacking them, but Nigel the pelican spots them and recognizes them from the stories told about their journey. He scoops them up in his large bill and saves them, taking them to the dentist's office.

Back at the dentist office, the tank is now green with filth and the fish await being put into plastic bags so the dentist can clean the tank. What they didn't count on was a new high-tech laser cleaning system the dentist just installed! The fish wake up the next day with a completely clean, sparkling tank. What are they going to do now?

As if things couldn't get worse, the dentist then gets a net and scoops up Nemo and puts him in a plastic bag outside the tank. Darla is coming today to get her birthday present!

Nemo Shows His Bravery

When Darla arrives, Nemo plays dead by floating belly up. He hopes the dentist will flush him down the toilet so he'll go out into the ocean. But Dr. Sherman, instead of flushing Nemo down the toilet, heads toward the garbage can in the corner. Nigel arrives at the window and Marlin sees Nemo in the bag. Marlin forces Nigel to go inside the dental office and all chaos breaks loose. He then sees Nemo in the bag, floating belly up and thinks his son is dead. Nigel is chased away again and he puts Dory and Marlin back into the water.

Marlin is terribly depressed when he believes Nemo is dead and that all that effort into making the journey was for nothing. Marlin starts to go home and doesn't want Dory's company any more. Dory's memory goes bad again and she can't find her way and the two are separated.

Meanwhile, Gill saves Nemo by jumping out of the tank and distracts everyone and Nemo is washed down the dentist's sink and out into the ocean.

Dory, lost and confused, encounters Nemo and she manages to recognize him and tells Nemo to come with her to bring him to his father. She forces a crab to tell them which way Marlin went and they eventually find Marlin. Father and son are united at last!

Their joy is short lived when they realize that Dory's been caught with a bunch of other fish in a huge fishing trawler's net. Nemo takes the lead and tells the large numbers of panicked fish to swim downward with all their might. Nemo gets caught inside the net too, trapped amongst the other fish, but with coaching and encouragement, the force of their combined effort to swim downward snaps the winch pulling the net upward.

Nemo is knocked out for a few minutes, but he wakes up and is alright. Dory is also saved and both she and Marlin are thrilled that they're all together again.

The three of them make their way back to the coral reef where life continues normally. Nemo goes back to school and little Squirt, the sea turtle, is now a student too! Marlin is finally a funny clown fish, he is respected by the other fish for his adventures (especially when the shark trio show up) and is much more easy going toward his son.

At the very end of Finding Nemo, we're back at the Dr. Sherman's dental office in Sydney. The Tank Gang manage to muck up their aquarium and they got into plastic bags at last. They jump out the window and manage to cross a busy street and plop into the harbor. The only thing is, they wonder, how do they get out of their bags? Later we see they've managed to get out.

What a great ending to Finding Nemo!