I, like others, had high expectations of Finding Nemo - The Musical. I had heard it was an incredible show, mostly from people on this site (which should have been my first red flag :lol
. There were things about the production that impressed me, although nothing really stood out as being a surprise or having any real "Wow" factor to it. Personally, I've seen it once and that's okay. I have no burning desire to go back and see it again. However, if you've never seen it before, and there's very little wait, then I'd recommend at least checking it out. I would not, however, recommend wasting a lot of time waiting for the show, and I disagree with anyone who says that to do so is "well worth it" (it's not).
If you've ever seen the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", there's a part at the end of the movie where they are doing a Dracula musical based on puppets. That was essentially the same concept as what Nemo is. Interestingly, though, that Dracula musical looked like a much better show than Nemo is.
Here's a list of what I liked about the show versus what I didn't find all that remarkable:
What I liked
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The costumes. Some of the character costumes were very cool, and that was a lot of fun.
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The sets. Let me be clear that there is not a whole lot in this regard. But some of the things like the aquarium and the jellyfish section were pretty neat.
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The theater. I found the theater to be nice and comfortable. The sound system was really good and it seemed to me that there wasn't a bad seat in the house. It also didn't feel crowded at all getting in and out of the theater. I liked that. And one fun little aspect was that near the stage there were these bubbles that had occasional projections of Nemo swimming around in them. That was cute, and it was fun when you could tell all the kids in the theater had spotted him.
Less than remarkable
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The songs. I agree 100% with the posters who said there was nothing at all special about the songs. None of them were very memorable or catchy. I didn't leave the theater with any of the songs going through my head, as is almost always the case when I see a musical.
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The story. This was probably the most disappointing aspect of the whole production to me. It was interesting because my girlfriend had never seen the movie and she said that she had a little bit of trouble following what was supposed to be happening in the story. I told her that I had seen the movie, and that the whole time we were watching the musical, I found myself thinking that anyone who had never seen the movie would probably be a little bit lost. That's probably my only real "complaint" about this musical. The story doesn't stand on it's own. You really have to have seen the movie in order to get fully what the story is. It was kind of like all they did for the musical was just took short snippets out of the movie and put them up onstage. But the snippets they chose were sometimes meaningless without the context of what occured prior or after.