Pixar’s movies have always excelled at making their audience both laugh and cry. The renowned studio is great at getting a reaction out of its viewers, and Finding Nemo is a prime example of this. As the story of a father searching for his abducted son, there’s a real primal, emotional association from the audience, whether they’re viewing the film as a parent or a child.
Along the way, there are plenty of laughs, but there’s also a healthy dose of tearjerking drama. This balance is helped by thoroughly developed characters. So, here are Finding Nemo’s 5 Funniest (& 5 Saddest) Moments.
Funniest: Marlin meets Dory
Pixar movies always have great partnerships at their core. Marlin and Dory are high on a long list of iconic duos that includes Woody and Buzz, Mike and Sulley, and Carl and Russell. The first meeting between these characters (except Mike and Sulley, who were already roommates at the start of Monsters, Inc., but we eventually saw their meeting in the prequel Monsters University) is always a hilarious moment.
When Marlin met Dory in Finding Nemo, he was frantically searching for his son, desperate to remember all the information he could about Nemo’s captors. He bumped into a blue tang who couldn’t remember a thing, and the rest is comedy history.
Saddest: Marlin’s wife and all but one of his unborn children are killed by a barracuda
This is the scene that a lot of kids’ parents — including Milhouse’s — skipped on DVD viewings. The kids who were unfortunate enough to endure it learned how quickly their life could end, and how destroyed their lives could become if the lives of those around them ended.
There’s a genuine sense of terror when the barracuda arrives in Finding Nemo’s prologue, as we witness an ecosystem at play from the perspective of the lifeforms at the bottom of the food chain. Appropriately, a movie about a father’s search for his son begins with him losing everything besides that son.
Funniest: “Fish are friends, not food.”
The huge, ominous great white shark in Finding Nemo was named Bruce after the nickname given to the mechanical shark on the set of Jaws. Unlike the shark from Steven Spielberg’s 1975 masterpiece, Bruce and his friends don’t want to eat anyone. They don’t even want to eat fish, which they’re biologically supposed to, let alone people.
According to their credo, “Fish are friends, not food.” The idea of bloodthirsty sharks taking on a vegetarian diet was really funny. However, when Bruce gets a taste of blood after Dory bumps her nose, he gets the bloodlust and starts ravenously pursuing her and Marlin.
Saddest: “I look at you and I…I’m home.”
When Marlin sees Nemo pretending to be dead and believes that he is, he turns around, defeated, and decides to head home. But Dory stops him. She doesn’t want him to leave her, because when she’s around him, she can remember things better. And she doesn’t call Marlin by his name — she just says, “Stop!” — because she can’t remember it.
She laments her forgetfulness: “When I look at you, I can feel it. I look at you and I…I’m home. Please. I don’t want that to go away. I don’t wanna forget.” What’s even more tragic about this moment is that Dory’s speech doesn’t even make Marlin come back. He gravely replies, “I’m sorry, Dory, but I do,” and swims away.
Funniest: “Sharkbait, ooh-ha-ha!”
As the new guy in the fish tank at the dentist’s office, Nemo (or, “Sharkbait”) is required to take part in an initiation ritual. He’s called to the peak of Mount Wannahockaloogie, a little toy volcano that’s been used to decorate the tank, to be invited into the inner circle by Gill.
There’s a chant involved in the ritual — “Sharkbait, ooh-ha-ha!” — that all of the fish cry out whenever his name is mentioned. When it gets a little annoying, Gill says, “Enough with the Sharkbait,” and then Gurgle starts the chant, but gets embarrassed before finishing it when he realizes he’s the only one: “Sharkbait! Ooh…ba-ba-do.”
Saddest: “I hate you.”
Every child, at some point throughout their life, will tell their parents they hate them. And every single one of them will eventually come to regret it. In Finding Nemo, we see this from the parent’s point of view. When Nemo tells Marlin, “I hate you,” we can feel Marlin’s devastation.
All he has left in the world, after a barracuda killed his wife Coral and all but one of their unborn children, whose egg was scratched, is Nemo, and he’ll do anything to make sure Nemo is safe. But this drives Nemo away. It’s perhaps the movie’s most heartbreaking moment (well, second most heartbreaking, after the aforementioned massacre).
Funniest: Squirt prepares Marlin and Dory to surf the East Australian Current
When Marlin meets Crush, he gets an important lesson in parenting. He’s overprotective of Nemo because he’s scared that something bad will happen to him, like what happened to Coral and all their other eggs. It’s what drove Nemo away. Marlin needs to learn to trust Nemo and give him some more freedom.
Crush gives this kind of freedom to his son, Squirt, who gives Marlin and Dory a crash course in departing from the East Australian Current. Rather than keeping Squirt hidden away to protect him from danger, Crush lets him dive head-first into dangerous situations to learn how to deal with them. It’s not perfect parenting, but it did teach Marlin an important lesson.
Saddest: “I have to tell him how old sea turtles are!”
Tragedy strikes Marlin’s quest to reunite with his son at every turn. By some miracle, he and Dory make their way to Sydney, but right before they get there, they’re sucked up by a blue whale and almost digested. Marlin is determined to get out of the whale’s mouth, so he charges at the brush over and over again, trying to break through.
He cries out, “I have to get out of here! I have to find my son! I have to tell him how old sea turtles are!” It’s touching to see how much that little conversation with Nemo affected Marlin. It tells us everything we need to know about their relationship.
Funniest: Jacques cleans Nemo
When Gill gives Nemo a tour of the fish tank in the dentist’s office, we’re treated to some of the best character introductions in Pixar’s impressive history, like Bubbles panicking about his bubbles escaping from his treasure chest and slamming it shut.
Arguably the funniest moment with these characters is when Jacques cleans Nemo. He spins the little clownfish around so fast that he becomes a blur, but when he’s done with him, he’s spotless. Nemo is so clean that he’s glowing. And then Jacques promptly retreats back into the novelty diver’s helmet where he lives and swings the caged door over.
Saddest: “I love you, Daddy.” “I love you, too, son.”
This moment falls into the tears-of-joy category, especially after everything Marlin and Nemo have been through in their quest to reunite with one another. They were also filled with regret about previous moments, like Marlin alienating Nemo and Nemo telling Marlin he hated him.
When Nemo tells Marlin, “I love you, Daddy,” and Marlin replies, “I love you, too, son,” it’s not a particularly sad moment, but it’s certainly an emotional one, and there isn’t a dry eye in the audience. The whole movie has been leading up to this moment. Marlin desperately searched for Nemo so that they could say these words to each other.
