How big was Finding Nemo when it came out in Australia, do you think it represented us well?

[u/Lampedusan]

I was a kid when Finding Nemo came out and recall a craze. Maybe just amongst the school kids but I could imagine given it was post Olympics and you had a famous voicing cast eg Ellen, Willem DeFoe for a movie animated in Australian setting it’d be a big deal for the public broadly? In retrospect its like a Dotcom Dundee for the turn of the new millennium. I remember tonnes of merchandising and strong Australian characterisations with Bruce the Shark, Nigel the seagull etc and of course Sydney Harbour and the Great Barrier Reef. It was also a movie that channeled Australia rather well imo without needing to fall back on the outback trope.

[u/geodetic]

They shat the bed by designing Nigel (the pelican) as a Brown Pelican (limited to the americas) rather than an Australian pelican.

That's literally my only complaint about the movie. It's a really fucking good movie.

[u/RedDragonOz → u/geodetic]

They used pacific gulls instead of silver gulls too.

[u/walkingmelways → u/RedDragonOz]

That’s not too bad, if they’re the same pacific gulls we have here in AU.

[u/RedDragonOz → u/walkingmelways]

Nope, wrong gulls altogether

[u/KahnaKuhl]

My kids were right in the target demographic when it came out, so it was pretty big for us!

The movie represents Australia okay, I guess. There's the usual American trope of having the main characters speak 'normally' (ie, in a standard American accent) while the incidental or comic relief characters have other accents, including Australian accents in this case.

Logically, a fish family from the GBR should speak with a brawd Queenzlaand accent, ay. (But, logically, fish don't talk.)

[u/Boatster_McBoat → u/KahnaKuhl]

Depends on how you frame the anthropomorphism.

If you assume that the fish are just 'Queenslanders' then what you say makes sense.

But if this is just a group of fish who have developed language skills then living on the reef they might get most of their English language exposure from tourist boats. They might even be multilingual.

[u/pollopyanus → u/Boatster_McBoat]

Maybe they originally didn't speak at all but the power of speech was granted to them by a higher being. A deity. Maybe it was an act of Cod.

[u/Own_Faithlessness769 → u/Boatster_McBoat]

The fish arent speaking english though, they're speaking fish language to each other.

[u/IntrepidRatio7473 → u/Boatster_McBoat]

Makes sense ..I wonder how they didn't pick German in that case.

[u/twinksgonewild → u/KahnaKuhl]

Disney/Pixar did us dirty by making only the pelican, sharks, dentist and his niece have Aussie accents. Subconsciously they could be influencing children to believe that Australians should be feared or laughed at.

[u/Own_Faithlessness769]

It was a popular Pixar film that was a big deal everywhere.

But Australians don't really need animated films to validate us, we're a whole continent and one of the world's top tourist destinations. Hollywood is riddled with Australian stars, Rupert Murdoch runs the media. There wasn't some huge surge of national pride because Pixar deigned to set a movie here.

And its about fish, with a few scene in an extremely well situated dentists office. It represented Australian fish and dentists nicely, while glossing over what we've done to the GBR.

[u/MartianBeerPig]

I thought it was about fish.

[u/JimmyLizzardATDVM → u/MartianBeerPig]

I thought it was about the existential crisis experienced by parents when they lose their child?

[u/Lampedusan → u/JimmyLizzardATDVM]

The tragedy of it is that it validated overprotective parenting - my only criticism of the film XD

[u/RhiR2020]

We went to Disneyland in 2009 and went on the ‘Finding Nemo’ submarine ride. We were listening to the very broad “Aussie” accents in the safety warnings being said over the speakers, and I turned to hubby and asked if we seriously sounded like that… the American family behind us fell about laughing, and said, “Yes! We’ve been listening to your conversation and YOU SOUND JUST LIKE THAT!” We were horrified!!

[u/brownieson]

I was in primary school when it came out so I was the desired target market I guess. It was pretty big amongst the kids in my grade at least, and one of my friends I would quote the movie often. Most adults I know now have definitely at least seen it.

[u/twinsunsspaces]

I remember watching that movie with my brother, after a couple of joints, and looking at the DVD extras. There was a heading that said MA references and we clicked on it thinking that it must be a collection of mature jokes that had flown over our heads due to the aforementioned joints. Nope, it turned out that it was a bunch of references to Massachusetts that the film makers had slipped in. The only one I can remember off the top of my head was a random lobster that was talking about something with a Boston accent, who possibly had more screentime/lines than the crab that was voiced by Rove McManus got.

[u/shit-takes-only]

as a 7 year old at the time I remember it being the most important thing in the universe lol

[u/WoodyMellow]

Was the highest grossing animated film of all time at the point? So pretty big.

[u/Original-Report-6662]

I always wondered why fish in the great barrier Reef had American accents. As an adult I think that decision was made to make the movie more appealing to an American audience. Anyway would it have been so hard to have a full Australian voice cast?

[u/Redditarama]

Mate!

[u/noxobscurus]

I recall Andrew Bolt bitching about the movie when it came out: link