I’m going to get this out of the way right now.

If you enjoy Theater Hopper, please vote for us at Top Web Comics. The Top 150 comics list resets every month, so if we can get a lot of votes past the sleeping guard, we might be able to sneak into the Top 10 and tip more people off to the site.

I don’t have anything I can give you in return. No promotions. No gimmicks. Just consider it a favor to me. Thanks.

That said, I had a chance to see Finding Nemo on Friday and of course I loved it. In fact, much to Cami’s chargrin, I spent most of Saturday quoting from it!

Technologically speaking, it’s light years ahead of 1995’s Toy Story (check out those cascading water effects!) But I don’t think Nemo will ever supplant that movie, it’s sequel – Toy Story 2 – or Monsters, Inc. It’s sad to report that the movie just doesn’t carry the same emotional resonnance.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved every frame. But I think the barrier in this case is that, frankly, we’re dealing with fish here. And while they have great personalities and characters traits, they’re hard to empathize with because… well, because they’re fish.

A Bug’s Life suffers from the same disadvantage. There is only so much I can warm up to a bug.

I don’t mean to sound overly critical. Especially in light of the fact that I think Finding Nemo is still the best picture I’ve seen this year. Story-wise, it still runs circles around the competition.

I thought Ellen DeGeneres did a great job as Dory, the fish with the short attention span. Her character’s disposition was infectious and even though they used the short term memory gag countless times, it never got stale.

Obviously, if you haven’t seen Finding Nemo yet, you need to go. I know I’ll watch it a second time.

Let me sum up another way. How much fun did I have at Finding Nemo? I opted out of seeing The Italian Job because I didn’t want to harsh my buzz. It’s that good.

One last time: VOTE!