Opens Fri May 30 at a buttload of theaters.

Finding Nemo, the new film from those brilliant megabyte jockeys at Pixar, opens with a shocking bout of violence and ends with what can only be described as a looming multiethnic coupling. In between, there are shark attacks, informative spoutings of dentistry tutelage, and perhaps the ugliest Australians ever committed to celluloid (Paul Hogan's leathery mug notwithstanding).

The story this time around: Nemo, a young clown fish with a deformed, stunted fin, lives in a pleasant patch of reef-front coral with his overprotective and neurotic father, Marlin (Albert Brooks). On his first day of school, Nemo takes a dare--partly to establish his playground cojones, partly to lash out at his dominating patriarch--and attempts to touch the bottom of a trolling boat. Disaster strikes, however, and Nemo is bagged by a diver and quickly whisked away to the mainland, leaving a rather daunting quest for his father: With only a dropped diving mask as a clue, Marlin must somehow locate his son.

And so the journey begins, stretching from the safe confines of the reef all the way to the shores of Sydney, Australia, where Nemo has been deposited into the aquarium of a dentist's office. He is not to remain there for long, however, as the dentist has specific plans for him: In less than a week, Nemo is to be a gift for the dentist's psychotically hyper niece, whose last aquatic present perished in a fit of bag-shaking fury. So with doom on the horizon, a plan is hatched by Nemo's tankmates--who range from a blowfish to a starfish to a fellow once-ocean-dwelling fin named Gill (Willem Dafoe, creepy as ever)--for a great escape, which will take them from the tank to the window to the street below and, eventually, to the bay.

Meanwhile, Marlin, who has desperately ventured from the reef with diving mask in tow, bumps into a bluefish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres). Simple-headed, with absolutely no short-term memory, Dory tags along with Marlin on his search, routinely forgetting everything, and more than once nearly getting them killed. Along their trek, they encounter a pack of stoner sea turtles, minefields of both mines and jellyfish, and--in a truly inspired bit--an AA-type meeting for sharks who have sworn off eating fish. All this leads up to a climax that, if not completely satisfying, certainly doesn't sink the entire venture.

A ridiculously gorgeous film, Finding Nemo proves yet again Pixar's current chokehold on big-screen animation (in America, at least--Japan is another matter). From the facial expressions of the fish and background shots of gently swaying sea grass, to expansive harbor shots of Sydney (with Opera House prominently on display) and the continual mist of plankton wisping by, every frame has been so detailed and obsessed over that the film stuns (the only blemish, once again, are the humans--though this time the company was wise enough to stray from any real attempts at making them convincing). Add in Pixar's gift for scripting, a gift that always makes their films tolerable for adults (be they watched by kids or parents or sober and/or THC-soaked in-betweens, Pixar's films always walk the treacherous line between sugar and smart with successful results), and the end product is a flower of a movie, exceedingly well-imagined, that is more than worth the multiplex gouging.