“‘Finding Nemo’ at 20: Disney’s Greatest Trauma Revisited”

Like a rogue magician giving away the secrets of the trade for free and thus breaking a covenant with my peers, lemme let you in on a simple truth about film criticism: A movie can be about anything you want it to be, as long as you don’t willfully ignore what’s in the movie. So, Finding Nemo, a movie that is not at all about 9/11, is, in my mind, a post-9/11 film that quite by accident reflects a whole lot of the shit on Americans’ hearts and minds 2 years after that horror show. 

People made similar readings of The Fellowship of the Ring, which came out mere months after the 9/11 attacks, so I think I can safely file Finding Nemo under the same category: Not strictly a 9/11 movie, but related, and also the last time – in my opinion – that a Pixar movie, a Disney movie, or a Disney-Pixar movie had any kind of teeth.

You can read my full essay over at Paste Magazine.

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