Finding Nemo

The 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films

They've enthralled or terrified generations of kids, and now they're giant worldwide blockbusters. So what are the best animated features of all time? Using an obscure system of weights and measures, TIME's Richard Corliss has compiled and annotated the countdown, from No. 25 (Lady and the Tramp) to No. 1 (see for yourself). Are your favorites on the list? Let the great debate commence; we know it'll be animated.

By Richard Corliss | June 23, 2011 | +

Everett

Director: Andrew Stanton

Year Released: 2003

Cast: Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Willem Dafoe, Alexander Gould, Allison Janney, Barry Humphries, Brad Garrett, Geoffrey Rush

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Marlin the clown fish (voiced by Albert Brooks) is a fussy little anxiety machine. When he learns he’s to be a father of 400 babies, he fidgets: “What if they don’t like me?” But he’s right to be concerned for his brood in the fish-eat-fish world of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. A shark devours Marlin’s wife and 399 of her eggs. That leaves little Nemo (Alexander Gould) — the one survivor, handicapped by an underdeveloped fin — and Marlin, burdened with an overdeveloped sense of dread. When Nemo is old enough to go to school (of fish), Dad’s pessimism is again validated: the lad defiantly swims into open water and is kidnapped. Marlin must conquer his own fear of the great wet world, that “swirling vortex of terror.” But he has a companion in his search: Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang with a sunny disposition and a short-term-memory problem.

The Pixar pixies always fashion funny, poignant stories to match their gorgeous computer images, and this time they hit the jackpot, in a lost-child saga told from the searching father’s point of view. With its ravishing underwater fantasia, Nemo trumps the design glamour of earlier Pixar films. The dramatic set pieces — Marlin and Dory eluding jellyfish stings, Nemo’s claustrophobic panic in a plastic bag — are realized with assured energy and balanced by the voice artists’ deft comic performances. Writer-director Andrew Stanton provides artistic and political resonances galore: he alludes to favorite movies, from Pinocchio to Psycho, and fearlessly takes on the powerful pet-shop and aquarium lobbies. There is also the secret insignia of any Pixar feature: a G-rated fart joke. Nemo was the highest-grossing CGI feature of its time and is one of two animated features on the All-TIME 100 movie list. It was, and remains, a serene marine enchantment.