Toy Story 3 2010

After a slew of startlingly original work, blighted only by Cars (and even that was an original idea, just not in my opinion a particularly good one), Pixar made their second ever sequel and they decided to finish off what we now see as the Toy Story trilogy.

It began, as the other 2 had, with one of Andy’s original stories with all of his favourite toys having their parts to play, whether they were heroes or villains. The first film had featured an old west jailbreak scenario, the second was a computer game that was largely Buzz’s story and this one went back to the old west, but centred around a train robbery, perpetrated by Mr Potato Head and his wife, being aided and abetted by their three adopted children, the triple eyed aliens from the claw machine at Pizza Planet.

It was however a fakeout. This was a long ago game that Andy had played with the toys. Andy’s now 17 and getting ready to go to college. He hasn’t played with Woody and the gang for a long time. They’ve even lost a few of their number (Bo Peep, Etch and Wheezy, which makes me wonder why they made him such a central part of the previous film to write him out in the next instalment). The toys have been shut in their box for all that time, they’ve got each other, but the future doesn’t look bright. Andy’s sister Molly is too old to be interested in her brother’s old toys, she doesn’t even want her Barbie any more. Buster is still around, but he’s old, fat and gray and doesn’t play much now.

The toys, except for the unfailingly optimistic Woody, believe they are facing a bleak future. The best they can hope for is to be boxed up and stored in the attic, the worst is to be simply thrown out. There is a 3^rd option. Andy’s mother supports a local day care centre and they’re always looking for donations of pre loved toys to keep the kids entertained. Woody hits the jackpot, Andy puts him in the college box, indicating that’s one part of his childhood that he simply cannot part with. Through a series of events which almost sees everyone else, Woody aside, be junked, they end up in the box that Andy’s mother is donating to the day care centre. Woody in an effort to save the others, winds up in the same box.

Initially the day care centre looks like heaven on earth for the toys. Kids play with them all day, every day, except for weekends, and then when those kids leave the centre, they get a whole new bunch of kids. This is of course before the true colours of The Lots-O-Huggin Bear (generally called Lotso) come to the fore. Lotso was lost and then replaced by his little girl, and he’s been bitter and twisted about it ever since. He rules the day care centre with an iron fist. New toys wind up in the Caterpillar Room where the very young kids play with them roughly, because they simply don’t understand how to play any other way due to their age. The more favoured toys get older kids, who play with them gently, not dissimilar to how Andy treated his toys. Any dissenters spend the night in the sand box. Lotso’s rules are mostly enforced by his companion in abandonment, a life size baby doll called Big Baby.

Woody escapes in an effort to get back to Andy, but is found by Bonnie (a young girl whose mother works at the centre and lives near to Andy). Initially Woody becomes part of Bonnie’s games with her own toys: a hedgehog called Mr Pricklepants, a classically trained actor, a unicorn (Buttercup) and a triceratops (Trixie). There’s also a rag doll (Dolly) and a clown (Chuckles). Chuckles was one of Lotso’s friends and tells Woody how things really are at the day care centre. Woody returns to save his friends.

The escape is elaborate and filled with adventure and near peril. In fact the toys do give up and believe that they’re all going to be burned to death in the furnace at the junkyard until the three eyed aliens rescue them with the junkyard’s giant CLAW. Buzz provides a lot of the humour, he was reset and until a TV fell on him and knocked the setting loose could only speak in Spanish.

The toys make it back to Andy and he gives them to Bonnie. He even plays with them one last time before Bonnie accepts them and integrates them into her own set of toys and dolls.

The animation was as always excellent and they even seemed to have made advances with real people, they still look a bit plasticky, but they were more realistic than previously.

This to me was the perfect ending for the story that began in Toy Story, being released 25 years after the original. I’m a little disappointed that there are plans for a Toy Story 4 to be honest.

Casting:

The original cast all returned for this one, with the exceptions of Annie Potts' Bo Peep, who was written out of this for unexplained reasons, and of Jim Varney as Slinky, he had unfortunately passed away in between the making of the two films, Slinky was voiced by actor and Varney’s friend Blake Clark.

Newcomers included: Ned Beatty as the sinister Lotso. Beatty’s a big cuddly guy, but has a growly voice which suited the duplicitous bear who could turn in an instant. Michael Keaton after voicing Chick Hicks in Cars came back and did a great turn as the weaselly, fashion obsessed Ken. Jeff Garlin also came back and provided the voice of Buttercup the unicorn. Richard Kind had a cameo as the Bookworm (he’s almost as much a part of the Pixar films as John Ratzenberger is, he was again wonderful as Hamm), Whoopi Goldberg played the octopus who helps Lotso; Stretch (again it says a lot for Pixar’s power that they can get an actress of Goldberg’s profile for such a minor role). My personal favourite bit of casting former Bond actor Timothy Dalton as the pompous Mr Pricklepants. When the hedgehog lays claim to being classically trained the joke there is that Dalton is a classically trained actor, he was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company before being cast as James Bond.

Up 2009

When I first heard about Up I thought Pixar had lost the plot. What on Earth sort of name was Up? What did that mean?

Despite this I went and saw it fairly close to when it was released. I was hooked after the opening 10 minutes. I defy someone to watch that and not cry. If that opening doesn't move you, then you don't have a heart.

I also really liked the idea behind the dream of Carl and Ellie. Sparked by a newsreel about a Percy Fawcett style gentleman adventurer they wanted to go to Rainbow Falls in South America and find lost civilisations, Only life kept getting in the way and they never got the chance to do that, although they did forge a pretty nice life together.

As the world changes around Carl Frederickson and soulless developers build high rises around the house he shared with Ellie, it seems that his life is over until a well meaning kid called Russell offers to help him in order to gain his Helping the Elderly badge; the last one he needs to become a fully fledged Wilderness Explorer.

At first Carl treats Russell pretty much how he treats everyone else and sends him off on a wild goose chase after a non existent bird called a snipe. It is that fruitless chase that leads Russell under Carl's house, believing that what sounds like a rat is actually the snipe. Of course poor Russell is hiding out on Carl's porch when the old man turns his little suburban cottage into a dirigible.

What follows is a wonderful odyssey to the land of adventure fiction with long lost explorers, lost worlds, unknown species of animal and plant and of course talking dogs. Doug is the star of the dogs, and I have to agree with Russell who exclaims 'But he's a talking dog' when Carl suggests ditching Doug.

Carl finds out that his childhood hero was nothing of the sort and risks his dreams and life to save Russell, the 'snipe' Kevin and Kevin's babies.

He then forges a new life as a kind of surrogate father to Russell, who was apparently abandoned by his own father and has grown up without that influence.

It's a heartwarming and heartbreaking odyssey.

Casting:

There was only one major name amongst the cast and that was Ed Asner as Carl. Carl was apparently based on Spencer Tracy, and there is some resemblance, but I more saw him as a cartoon version of Asner himself and particularly the grumpy old newsman Lou Grant that Asner is best known for portraying.

Christopher Plummer, best remembered as the father in The Sound of Music was cast as 'gentleman' explorer Charles F. Muntz. Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes and Percy Fawcett have been cited as inspirations. The only connections with Lindbergh and Hughes I can see are that Muntz was an aviator (dirigible rather than plane, though) and seemingly fabulously wealthy. Fawcett however is dead on. Fawcett, like Muntz, went missing while looking for a lost city in the wilds of South America. Unlike Muntz he probably perished in the wild.

Jordan Nagai, the unknown child actor who voiced Russell deserves special praise, his unaffected portrayal of the sweet kid is one of the things that makes Up a great film. He hasn't done anything of note since, but as he's only 16 there's plenty of time.

John Ratzenberger had an almost blink and miss it cameo as one of the workmen on the site around Carl's house, and was probably only included because he now has to be in every Pixar film.

Could the originality last?

WALL-E 2008

How does one even try to describe WALL-E? Extraordinary is a good start. The animation, or rather what Pixar achieved with it, had never been attempted before and it's never been achieved since. The desolate, deserted, garbage covered Earth looked real. WALL-E, the dedicated little trash robot didn't look like a cartoon, he actually looked like a machine made out of steel and glass. The love of his life, the sleek, ovoid EVE, does look more cartoonlike. I think it's her shape and the fact that she hovers and has no visible connection between her egg shaped body, arms and head.

WALL-E shows a rather frightening future. Earth was largely taken over by a giant corporation called Buy 'N' Large, we eventually created so much garbage that the planet became uninhabitable. Those that could afford to leave took off for the stars in a giant spaceliner. The intention was to stay in orbit until the WALL-E garbage units could clean up the planet and make it liveable.

That was 700 years ago. The planet is still broken. The rest of the units have given up. There's only WALL-E left. He spends his days collecting, compacting trash into cubes, then stacking them up where he can find the space to do so. He's created entire skyscrapers of these cubes. His one and only friend is a cockroach (that's a reference to the adage that no matter what we do to the planet somehow cockroaches will survive). WALL-E's nights are spent locked up from the nightly dust storms, in a decorated storage unit, watching an old recording of Hello, Dolly!

Then one day EVE appears and WALL-E falls in love with her. EVE can be a BAMF when she needs to be too. She finds a small plant that WALL-E has discovered and stored with his other treasures and this is her directive, to find evidence that organic life can survive on Earth, take it back to the ship and they can return.

In the time they've been in space, the ship's auto pilot has taken over and while there is a captain, he's a figurehead who just does what the auto pilot tells him to. The presence of WALL-E and EVE and their relationship, which overrides any programming they may have had forces the captain to take independent action and with the help of a bunch of broken robots and a few aware passengers they return to Earth. I doubt the ability of these people to survive, let alone rebuild humanity, but the ending is upbeat, for what is a fairly bleak outlook for a feel good cartoon.

The weird thing about WALL-E is that there is hardly any dialogue until WALL-E and EVE get on board the ship and interact with the captain and a couple of passengers. For most of the film the only words spoken are WALL-E and EVE and these in robotic voices. WALL-E is the achievement, though. Somehow the animators made this character sympathetic to audiences. We were genuinely concerned for the humble little robot, he made us laugh and cry and pull for him the entire time.

Pixar have always worn their heart on their sleeve in their films, especially when there are ecological concerns (another thing that was surprising about Cars, it glorified fuel consumption and consumerism) and this has never been more evident than in WALL-E, despite the hopeful ending.

Casting:

Because the main characters are robots with limited vocabularies, the casting mirrored that. There are only 4 real casting choices I can talk about.

One is the captain of the ship played by actor and comedian Jeff Garlin. At the time Garlin had done Curb Your Enthusiasm, although I know him as Murray Goldberg in The Goldbergs, and it didn't matter what his cartoon version looked like I kept seeing Murray commanding a star cruiser.

Another cast member was Sigourney Weaver as the voice of the ship. Casting Sigourney Weaver, beast known for her role as Ripley in the Alien franchise just seemed to work for some reason.

Kathy Najimy had a cameo as Mary, one of the passengers on Axiom and kind of representative of the women on board. John Katzenberger as John was her male counterpart.

For technical achievement at least as well as depth of feeling I couldn't wait to see what Pixar would do next.

Ratatouille 2007

As my last review indicated it would have been hard to top the marketing exercise that was Cars for sheer suckiness. I think Cars actually had a few people wondering if Pixar had lost the magic. Ratatouille would prove that they hadn't.

The idea is as off the all as anything they'd done in the past. A rat that likes cooking and can actually perform as a chef in a 5 star Michelin restaurant. That Brad Bird was involved should also not have surprised.

Remy, the cookery inclined rat kind of reminded me a lot of an old Warner Bros cartoon. In that one a musically inclined mouse lives in a house and plays the piano whenever he can. The household cat finds him and chases him. Eventually the owners of the house think that their cat can play the piano. The ruse is eventually exposed and while they can't perform outside of the house the householders enjoy beautiful music privately (the cat cannot play piano, but he is a whiz on the drums).

A series of events lead Remy to Paris. We know we're in Paris, because pretty much every shot from inside a house or apartment gives an excellent view of the Eiffel Tower. Apparently in films and cartoons no matter where you are in Paris if you can find a window you can get a really good view of the Eiffel Tower.

Not only does Remy wind up in Paris, the home of the world's best cooking, he lands at Gusteau's, the chef he most admires. Gusteau is long dead, but his restaurant still survives and Remy is guided the ghost of Gusteau, although even this 'ghost' is at pains to point out that he is actually a figment of Remy's imagination.

Also recently arrived at Gusteau's is a rather awkward young man by the name of Linguini. Linguini is actually the illegitimate son of Gusteau and is therefore entitled to inherit the restaurant. Something that the diminutive, oily head chef Skinner does not want to happen, he's close to getting the restaurant himself and also launching a line of fast food frozen products bearing Gusteau's name and likeness.

Linguini can't cook, he's initially hired as the kitchen's garbage boy, but Remy can and with the rat's help Linguini becomes a famous cook and also falls in love with the restaurant's driven junior chef Collette. Also with Remy's help Linguini inherits his birth right and Skinner who knows about Remy tries to bring the whole thing undone on the night that world famous critic and Gusteau hater Anton Ego visits. It doesn't work because Remy's ratatouille is the best thing Ego has ever tasted since his mother's ratatouille, the very thing that started his lifelong love affair with food.

The backgrounds really brought Paris to life. During the chase scene my wife and I were watching and saying 'we've been there!', 'yeah, I remember that too.' As with his previous Pixar film The Incredibles, Bird didn't attempt to make his people lifelike, they were caricatures. The artists picked a feature (Skinner's height, Linguini's gangly frame, Collette's nose, Ego's sunken eyes) and made that the focus of the character. The rats were also quite cartoony, which meant that they didn't really move like actual rats, but anthropomorphic versions.

Remy and Linguini were likeable multi layered protagonists in the way that the shallow Lightning McQueen wasn't, and while they bounced off other characters there was no need to add in a laboured comedy relief character to detract from the facts that your main character isn't interesting or likeable.

Whatever it was, it all worked in every way that Cars didn't.

Casting:

Patton Oswalt wasn't as well known as he now is when he did Ratatouille and voiced Remy, but I honestly can't think of anyone else who could have done better. I'm a big fan of The Goldbergs and now every time I watch the show and hear Adam's voiceovers I'm going to see a large rat.

Brad Garrett, who had previously been the puffer fish in Nemo's tank was Gusteau and with the fake French accent was almost unrecognisable.

Brian Dennehy was cast as Remy's uncouth father, and they gave him the right amount of size to immediately put the viewer in mind of the well known character actor.

Janeane Garofalo played Collette and this tied into the unconventional romantic leads that the actress was known for at the time.

John Ratzenberger had his now obligatory cameo as Mustafa, the head waiter at the restaurant. The French accent masked his normally distinctive voice.

I know Peter O'Toole voiced Anton Ego and he did a good job, but I think this role was written with Vincent Price in mind, he even looks like Vincent Price, who as well as being an actor was also a gourmet chef. It's just a shame he had been dead for over a decade when they made Ratatouille.

This was going to be a hard one to top.

Cars 2006

I'll start this by saying that I rate Cars and it's sequel as two of the poorest things Pixar have done (I'm at a loss as to why they're doing a 3rd one).

The cynic in me says that now Disney had complete and total ownership of Pixar they wanted to put out something that they could market to the hilt, and whatever other failings Cars has, it is extremely marketable, especially to the young boy market. My nephew loved everything Cars related at that age and had more than a few Lightning McQueen toys. Apparently, Cars had been on Pixar's radar for a while, it just hadn't been greenlit until this point.

It was for me, a major disappointment that Pixar followed up the absolutely brilliant The Incredibles with a rather lack lustre effort about humanised Nascars. Maybe if you're a car fan, which I am not, it strikes more of a chord, but Cars and it's sequel seem to rate low down on most people's estimation.

I found the race sequences extremely boring. My favourite bit was Guido; the little Italian forklift, showing up all the mocking experienced forklift pit crew up by changing Lightning's tires in double quick time, the film could have gone up in my estimation if it had been about Guido and not Lightning McQueen.

I will say that the animation, especially the scenery in and around Radiator Springs, was stunning and far away the highlight of the movie.

The storyline about the brash driven newcomer finding himself a fish out of water, learning about his craft and a bit of humility and turning out to be a decent person/car afterwards was very trite and not what audiences expected from Pixar. It didn't help that for most of the film Lightning McQueen is a fairly unlikeable protagonist (none of Pixar's previous heroes were). They tried to fill this with Mater, the old red neck tow truck being comedy relief, and like with many characters of this sort, I found him tiresome rather than funny.

The best bit of the film actually comes at the end, during the credits where they show clips from other Pixar films, but car themed ones. That's a fair indictment on the film that the best part is the credits joke.

Casting:

Whatever else they got wrong, the casting was as always excellent. Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen was dead on. Wilson was forging a career playing this sort of character and he was white hot at the time.

Although Paul Newman, himself a car enthusiast, was well cast as the old, wise, retired racecar Doc Hudson, I always found it kind of sad that documentaries aside, Cars was his last film.

Michael Keaton as the highly unpleasant Chick Hicks was well done, although I'm not sure why they had to cast as well known and high profile an actor in that particular role.

Cheech Marin (of Cheech and Chong fame) played to type as Ramone, an Impala lowrider with appropriate paint job, as did George Carlin in the role of a hippie 1960 VW bus.

John Ratzenberger as Mack, McQueen's truck, had his biggest role since Toy Story 2, and was part of a nice joke when the cars watch the other Pixar movies, pointing out that they keep using the same guy.

I loved the cameo from Jeremy Piven as Harv, Lightning's agent. It was a nice little gag for those who watched Entourage and loved Piven as the amoral talent agent Ari Gold.

Richard Kind also has a cameo as a lost car who refuses to ask for directions.

Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Billy Crystal, John Goodman and Dave Foley all reprised their roles for the end credit sequence and that was a sign of how big Pixar had become that they could call on this sort of talent for a almost throwaway joke sequence at the end of a film.

The next film has to be better than this.

The Incredibles 2004

How do you follow up an amazingly successful animated film about searching the ocean for a missing young clownfish? Simple, you do a fast paced comedy about a family of superheroes.

The Incredibles came out in 2004, just before the superhero boom really kicked in. I personally love it. I love everything about this film. It just does not hit a bum note for me.

I read a lot of comics as a kid and I did often wonder about the logistics of superheroes. What did they do when they got older? Could they not be superheroes? Who paid for the damage that they often caused in discharging their duties as super powered people? Could they get married and live normal lives? Would their kids have powers, would they be the same powers as their parents or not? The Incredibles set out to answer all these questions and more.

Bob Parr is Mr Incredible, a retired superhero (he didn't retire by choice, it was forced on him by the government), he works for a soulless insurance company and longs to return to his glory days. His wife Helen, was once Elastigirl, she's now a stay at home mother, who has issues trying to deal with two super powered children (their daughter Violet can make herself invisible and project force fields, their son Dash has super speed), they also has a baby Jack Jack, but as yet he hasn't manifested any powers, and Helen is hoping that he won't.

Secretly Bob goes out with his old friend Frozone and does some vigilante work. but even Frozone wants to give it up and do normal things with Bob, like go bowling, which is what they tell their wives they're doing.

Bob is contacted by a mysterious and beautiful woman who calls herself Mirage and offers him a chance to get back into the game. He passes her tests and after getting a new suit from his old costume designer, the delightfully acerbic Edna Mode, goes off to do a mission on a volcanic island where his new benefactor makes his home.

Helen works out that something is going on, is supplied with costumes for herself and her family by Edna and leaving Jack in the care of a teenage babysitter, flies off to go find out what Bob has gotten himself into. I should point out that it was not Helen's choice to leave Jack with the unprepared adolescent, that happened when Violet and Dash stowed away with their mother.

In the process the kids will discover how to use their powers and not be afraid to do so, Bob and Helen will realise that they both love superheroing and should never have given it up and how much they love each other and their family.

The villain of the piece is someone who calls himself Syndrome, he's kind of an evil genius inventor, who always wanted to be a superhero, but never had powers, so in revenge he killed all the old heroes and set himself up to be one.

The Incredibles take him down, but then he takes Jack Jack hostage, only for the babies powers (of which he seems to have not one, but many) to manifest in a startling manner. This causes his cape to become caught in his aeroplane's exhaust and underlines Edna's point that capes have no business being part of anyone's costume.

The animation in this one was crisp and clean, but cartoony throughout. I believe Pixar still had problems drawing realistic looking people, so decided to make them look like cartoons. It works. What also worked were the frequent nods to James Bond. The island is remiscent of Dr No's residence in that film, the approach to it is directly lifted from The Man With the Golden Gun and the fact that the base is in a volcano is from You Only Live Twice. Syndrome himself is not dissimilar to Blofeld.

There's also a great short cartoon on the DVD about what happened while Kari was trying to babysit Jack Jack.

Casting:

Craig T. Nelson often played the tough guy parental figure, so this made him perfect for Bob, plus he has one of those deep superhero type voices.

I best remember Holly Hunter from Raising Arizona, where she desperately wanted to be a mother, so to cast her as a mother/superhero made perfect sense.

Samuel Jackson was cast as the retired Frozone years before he played Nick Fury, and like with nearly everything Jackson does he makes it work.

The best bit of casting was director and writer Brad Bird voicing Edna Mode. With her appearance and even the voice I always saw her as being based on Linda Hunt, although I can't find anything that says so, however Bird does a great job.

Pixar regulars Wallace Shawn and John Ratzenberger were cast in cameos as Bob's boss Gilbert Huph (who weirdly enough both looked and sounded like a cartoon version of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard) and a tiny role at the end as a villain who went by the name of The Underminer.

Finding Nemo 2003

By 2003 Pixar had become the masters of doing the unexpected in terms of what they chose as subject material, and their 2003 release Finding Nemo was no exception.

They did actually give a little hint at the end of Monsters, Inc. with the clownfish doll in Boo's room, one of the few times they've done something like that, but I still don't think it prepared anyone for the visual feast of the senses that was Finding Nemo.

Those incredibly lush colourful underwater shots are on display right from the beginning and they continue throughout the film. I don't think I've ever seen anything as lushly animated.

Most of the action happens in waters close to Australia, so for me I got to see things that I was more familiar with.

The story is fairly simple. Bereaved clownfish Marlin dotes on his son Nemo, as he is the one thing Marlin has left after a barracuda attack takes his wife Coral and all of their eggs, bar the one containing Nemo. Even the name is a remembrance of Coral, she wanted to name all of the babies. Marlin suggested naming half of them Marlin and the other half Coral, but she wanted at least one to be called Nemo.

Marlin is the male equivalent of a 'smother'. The animators did do some research here, because generally the male clownfish is the one who cares for the eggs. He follows Nemo to school and is there when Nemo defies him and touches a boat, only to be taken by a diver and wind up in a fishtank in a dentist's office in Sydney. He must be a pretty decent dentist, too, because he looks after the Prime Minister's teeth.

Marlin predictably goes after his son and the journey takes him from his home on the Great Barrier Reef to Sydney Harbour. Most of the time he''s accompanied by a blue tang called Dory. Dory has major short term memory issues, but she's unfailingly cheerful and optimistic, and she can read, which means that she can work out from a lost diver's mark where Nemo has been taken.

Marlin will meet vegetarian sharks, escape from an old minefield, a terrifying lanternfish and ride the East Australian Current with a group of very cool seat turtles. Pretty much everything Nemo had never thought his father would do, Marlin does.

Nemo helps his fellow tank fish to escape, something they do with the assistance of a pelican named Nigel. The little clownfish with the damaged fin rides the drain from the dentist's drain (he plays dead and manages to escape down the bowl where patients rinse) to the harbour, and is luckily reunited with Marlin.

As often happens with Pixar films, everything in Finding Nemo seems to work, the animation especially and with that they conquered another obstacle that had confounded animators; water. The characters, the settings, the simple story with layers and it takes the viewer and sweeps them along with the characters just like the current they are swimming through.

Casting:

Albert Brooks already had quite a body of work behind him when he did Finding Nemo, those credits included an Academy Award nomination for Network News in 1987. He had the right sort of voice and image for the cautious worried Marlin.

The makers of the film got the idea to cast Ellen Degeneres as Dory when they saw her do a sequence in her comedy series Ellen where she covered a large amount of topics in a very short space of time. That was pretty much how the comedienne did things, it was her schtick. I found it kind of annoying in Ellen, but endearing as Dory in Finding Nemo. She would later go on to host one of the biggest talk shows on the planet.

Willem Dafoe, better known for serious dark work voiced Gill, the cagy old, scarred cage fish determined to escape. He was surrounded by actors like Alison Janney and Brad Garrett.

One thing Finding Nemo did was cast Australian actors in roles. The sharks were played by Barry Humphries as Bruce, the great white shark, he was also the biggest and possibly the meanest when he smelled blood. It was interesting casting as Humphries, a talented actor, is best known for dressing up in female clothing and playing Dame Edna Everage housewife super star. His fellow sharks, a mako called Chum was played by Bruce Spence (best known as the gyro captain in Mad Max 2) and a hammerhead by the name of Anchor was Eric Bana, he'd already done Black Hawk Down by this stage so had quite a high overseas profile. Nigel was voiced by Geoffrey Rush and one of Australia's most beloved actors; Bill Hunter was the voice of the never seen dentist who captured Nemo.

Pixar managed to get their favourite John Ratzenberger in there as a school of fish.