YOU know it's a film event when you drag your carcass out of bed on a Saturday and then find that half of Basingstoke is already in Ster Century.

Yes, the highest grossing animated film ever has finally reached these shores.

There's actually no point in me even toiling away writing these words, as, to put it frankly, I'm redundant here.

Nemo doesn't need my help to boost its box office, neither will it matter if I decide to rip it to shreds in the manner of Bruce the Shark.

But, duty calls, so here we go.

From the Pixar Studios, Finding Nemo delves not into the lives of the toys in a bedroom but into the inhabitants of any ocean, or fish tank for that matter.

Marlin (Albert Brooks) is a troubled clown fish father who, after losing his wife and nearly all his kids in a nasty attack, cannot help but be alienatingly overprotective of the one he has left - young Nemo.

But the latter rebels against Dad's fretting, gets himself into trouble and shipped off to a dentist's waiting room in Sydney.

So Marlin takes to the wide open seas, accompanied by a dozy fish named Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), to find Nemo, bumping into an endless number of crazy characters along the way, including some surfer dude turtles and a support group for sharks who are trying to give up eating fish.

And yes, there are no surprises here, because Finding Nemo is very good. But it's not absolutely great in the way of Toy Story, with the latter's ironic take on merchandising and a myriad of aspects of adult life, making its appeal truly universal.

Like Monsters Inc., Nemo is primarily a kiddie flick, with some sharp asides, but a touch too much of the cute stuff.

Its theme of family is reinforced many times in mini ways - e.g. the turtle children and the fact that Dory simply can't remember where hers are.

And there's also Nemo's "disability", the injury inflicted on him when his mum and siblings died. Can your hear the heartstrings being plucked to death?

It's also hard to ignore the growing corporate monster that surrounds these films - every advertisement beforehand was flogging some Nemo-related bit of plastic that you'll get free with any household product, and the amount of television coverage has been simply obscene.

But I'd a big meanie if I pursued this line - Finding Nemo has amazing animation, with the shadows on the fish tank and the jellyfish field drawing gasps.

There is fantastic voice work all round (from Dame Edna, Ellen DeGeneres and Willem Dafoe in particular) and I hereby testify that his little deformed fin made me cry - result.