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Fails the Bechdel test

Finding Nemo

2003. Directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, written by Andrew Stanton and Bob Peterson and David Reynolds.

The Bechdel test

Bechdel score

0 / 3

Fails

  1. No 1. At least two women
    Fewer than two women characters.
  2. No 2. Who talk to each other
    Our parser found no scene where two women talk to each other.
  3. No 3. About something besides a man
    Not reached: the film fails an earlier rule.

Second opinion

Agree bechdeltest.com readers give it 1 out of 3.

Poster for Finding Nemo

The film

A clown fish named Marlin lives in the Great Barrier Reef and loses his son, Nemo, after he ventures into the open sea, despite his father's constant warnings about many of the ocean's dangers. Nemo is a boy abducted by a boat and netted up and sent to a dentist's office in Sydney. While Marlin ventures off to try to retrieve Nemo, Marlin meets a fish named Dory, a blue tang suffering from short-term memory loss. The companions travel a great distance, encountering various dangerous sea creatures such as sharks, anglerfish and jellyfish, in order to rescue Nemo from the dentist's office, which is situated by Sydney Harbour. While the two are searching the ocean far and wide, Nemo and the other sea animals in the dentist's fish tank plot a way to return to the sea to live their lives free again.

Released
30 May 2003
Genres
Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Rated
G
IMDb
8.2 / 10
Metascore
90 / 100
Awards
Won 1 Oscar. 49 wins & 63 nominations total
Elsewhere
View on IMDb

Starring, by lines spoken

  • Women
  • Men
  • Not in the cast list
  • Bigger name, more lines
  1. Marlin 360 lines, man
  2. Dory 244 lines, woman
  3. Nemo 156 lines, man
  4. Gill 87 lines, man
  5. Bloat 43 lines, man
  6. Peach 40 lines, woman
  7. Gurgle 39 lines, man
  8. Bruce 38 lines, man
  9. Nigel 34 lines, man
  10. Crush 29 lines, man
Full cast, 69 people
  • Albert Brooks as Marlin (voice)
  • Ellen DeGeneres as Dory (voice)
  • Alexander Gould as Nemo (voice)
  • Willem Dafoe as Gill (voice)
  • Geoffrey Rush as Nigel (voice)
  • Brad Garrett as Bloat (voice)
  • Allison Janney as Peach (voice)
  • Austin Pendleton as Gurgle (voice)
  • Stephen Root as Bubbles (voice)
  • Vicki Lewis as Deb / Flo (voice)
  • Joe Ranft as Jacques (voice)
  • Andrew Stanton as Crush (voice)
  • Elizabeth Perkins as Coral (voice)
  • Nicholas Bird as Squirt (voice)
  • Bob Peterson as Mr. Ray / Additional Voices (voice)
  • Barry Humphries as Bruce (voice)
  • Eric Bana as Anchor (voice)
  • Bruce Spence as Chum (voice)
  • Bill Hunter as Dentist (voice)
  • LuLu Ebeling as Darla (voice)
  • Jordan Ranft as Tad (voice)
  • Erica Beck as Pearl (voice)
  • Erik Per Sullivan as Sheldon (voice)
  • John Ratzenberger as Fish School (voice)
  • Carlos Alazraqui as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Alec Medlock as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Bob Bergen as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Nicole Miller as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Geoff Brooks as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Lisa Peers as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Paul Eiding as Additional Voice (voice)
  • Phil Proctor as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Leland Grossman as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Daryl Sabara as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Lili Ishida as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Emmett Shoemaker as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Oliver Kindred as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Ben Stanton as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Danny Mann as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Kali Whitehurst as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Rove McManus as Additional Voices (voice)
  • James S. Baker as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Vanessa Marano as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Susan Blu as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Annelise Nolting as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jeff Pidgeon as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jennifer Darling as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Aaron Fors as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Katherine Ringgold as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jess Harnell as Additional Voices (voice)
  • David Ian Salter as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Caroline Kindred as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Sherry Lynn as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jim Ward as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Mickie McGowan as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jack Angel as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Laura Marano as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Bobby Block as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Laraine Newman as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jane Carr as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Michaela Jill Murphy as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Jan Rabson as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Bradley Trevor Greive as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Evan Sabara as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Marc John Jefferies as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Eliza Schneider as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Lee Unkrich as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Noah Luke as Additional Voices (voice)
  • Matilda Rowler as Jellyfish (voice) (uncredited)

Who talks, scene by scene

We couldn't read who says what in this film's script, so there's no dialogue chart for it yet.

The evidence

  • Straight from the script
  • Counted from the script and the credits

Tap an exhibit to open it.

Exhibit A: every 100 lines

Out of every 100 lines with a known speaker, 27 are women's.

347 lines from women, 947 from men.

  • Women
  • Men

Exhibit B: who's in it

20 women and 40 men in the cast. 6 women and 29 men from it get lines.

Characters

With lines

  • Women
  • Men

Exhibit C: who gets heard

The first woman speaks at line 2 of 1,415. The longest stretch with no woman speaking runs 54 lines.

Every line of dialogue, first to last

  • First line by a woman
  • Longest stretch with no woman speaking

Words spoken

Women speak 25% of the words (2,405), men 75% (7,252). Women have 27% of the lines, so their lines run shorter than men's.

Exhibit D: the test the other way

Run the other way, for men, the film scores 1 out of 3.

Conversations between two named characters

Exhibit E: behind the camera

2 of the 13 people in these jobs are women. Across the whole crew, 31% of the people whose gender is listed are women.

Directed by
Andrew Stanton (man)
Written by
Andrew Stanton (man), David Reynolds (man), Bob Peterson (man)
Produced by
Graham Walters (man)
Shot by
Sharon Calahan (woman), Jeremy Lasky (man)
Edited by
David Ian Salter (man)
Music by
Thomas Newman (man)
Production design by
Ralph Eggleston (man)
Cast by
Mary Hidalgo (woman), Matthew Jon Beck (man), Kevin Reher (man)

The crew, department by department

  • Other crew

    35 women, 52 men, 139 not listed

  • Visual Effects

    7 women, 33 men, 39 not listed

  • Production

    13 women, 7 men, 20 not listed

  • Sound

    5 women, 23 men, 5 not listed

  • Editing

    2 women, 3 men, 8 not listed

  • Art

    0 women, 8 men, 4 not listed

  • Writing

    0 women, 7 men, 2 not listed

  • Directing

    0 women, 3 men, 3 not listed

  • Women
  • Men
  • Gender not listed on TMDB

Exhibit F: how old the stars were

Women: 44 on average. Men: 46 on average. The top-billed cast, at the film's release.

Women

Allison Janney 43, Vicki Lewis 43, Ellen DeGeneres 45

Men

Alexander Gould 9, Brad Garrett 43, Willem Dafoe 47, Geoffrey Rush 51, Stephen Root 51, Albert Brooks 55, Austin Pendleton 63

Exhibit G: the money

It made 10.0 times what it cost.

Budget
$94 million
Box office
$940 million

From TMDB, not adjusted for inflation.

About this analysis

Our parser read the script: 1 scenes and 1,415 lines of dialogue. The bechdeltest.com rating comes from that site’s readers. How the test works

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