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The first time I saw the original Finding Nemo movie from Disney-Pixar, it was 2003, one year before I got married. There wasn’t much I remembered about the original movie, except for that there was some witty, adult humor centering around a child clownfish named Nemo who was separated from his father (Marlin). He doesn’t listen to his father’s rules, ultimately ending up swimming for his life in a fish tank in a dentist’s office. It was released coincidentally around the same time we got our first flat screen high definition television. I think it was for this reason, almost a decade ago, we added the DVD movie  to our home library, because coupled with the recent technology jump, the fish literally seemed to swim off the television screen.

Fast forward 9 years. Today I had the opportunity to see Finding Nemo in 3D with my almost 3 year-old-son. We’ve taken him to 2 other Disney movies, Winnie the Pooh and Beauty and the Beast. The 3D glasses in combination with the Beast freaked him out so much I skipped taking him to Brave and brought a friend’s daughter instead.

I considered finding surrogate kids to take this time around and even consulted my Facebook friends on whether an almost 3 year-old could handle it. One friend suggested skipping the first few minutes of the movie to minimize the scariness,  but there were several active parts that he still felt were scary after, that causing him to completely bury himself into my shoulder and at times visibly shake.  Then became the love/hate relationship he has with these types of movies, basically peeking at it with 1 eye open, or watching it with the glasses off, but he was completely intrigued. He told the people in line with us afterwards at the bagel store “it was really scary.” He reiterated to me when I kissed him goodnight, that “it was scary.” None of the scariness stopped him from asking if he could watch Nemo again as he pulled the DVD he had never noticed before off the shelf at home.

As expected, the 3D glasses really make you feel as if you are literally swimming under the ocean with the characters. What I didn’t expect was how the humorous lines resonate completely differently with you, after you’ve dealt with almost 8 years of marriage and 3 years of parenthood. Even though you may have seen it before, there is nothing like watching your child’s reaction to an experience you’ve already had, and maybe even written off as been there…done that experience. One thing that this movie made me realize is how different your perspectives can be as you get older. What I thought was funny years ago, was a completely different type of funny now.

Finding Nemo 3D will be in theaters nationwide September 14, 2012.

I received tickets for this movie for free in order to facilitate this review. Any opinions are my own.