If you have any young nieces or nephews, or perhaps even godchildren, you may want to "borrow" them for an afternoon as an excuse to dive into the latest full-length computer animated feature from the wizards at Pixar, who previously made Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc.

Eye-popping visuals and a superb script, crammed to the gills with laugh-out-loud gags, combine to stunning effect in this hugely entertaining and wildly inventive fable set beneath the ocean waves.

After a summer of largely disappointing blockbusters, Finding Nemo is undoubtedly the catch of the month, if not the year.

When his only son Nemo (voiced by Alexander Gould) is plucked from the sea around the Great Barrier Reef and re-housed in a fish tank in a dentist's waiting room, a courageous clownfish called Marlin (Albert Brooks) embarks on an epic adventure to bring the youngster back home.

Aided by a friendly blue tang called Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), who suffers from short-term memory loss, Marlin travels through shark-infested waters, overcoming a myriad dangers to reunite with his beloved boy.

Brooks plays his compulsive-obsessive father with sensitivity and dry wit, like when he frets that none of his children will like him and his wife replies, "Marlin, there are 400 eggs, I'm pretty sure one of them will like you."

The rapport between Marlin and Dory is fantastic, like when ditzy Dory forgets who Marlin is and swims to the surreal conclusion: "Are... are you my conscience?"

"Yes, I'm your conscience," sighs Marlin. We haven't spoken for a while. How have you been?"

"I can't complain," replies Dory cheerily, as if talking to her conscience were the most natural thing in the world.

DeGeneres is a hoot as the comic sidekick and there are dozens of memorable supporting characters including a surfer dude turtle and a trio of sharks trying to embrace vegetarianism ("I am a nice, friendly shark," they chant, "Not a fish-eating monster. Fish are our friends, not food.")

The animation is simply jaw-dropping and the voice cast is impeccable.

In fact, you'll probably want to see the film two or three times just to see all of the sly visual jokes and rich detail crammed into every water-logged frame.