With four big critical and box-office hits in a row -- "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story," "Toy Story 2" and "Monsters Inc." -- Pixar/Disney has just about the best track record of any outfit currently working in Hollywood and the Midas touch in computer-animation.

And their $80 million summer '03 offering, "Finding Nemo," is basically another winner, though it can't quite muster the kind of emotional tug that appeals to all generations and made several of the earlier Pixar films such instant classics.

It's the story of a clown fish named Marlin who lives in Australia's Great Barrier Reef and has recently lost his wife-fish to a barracuda, making him a somewhat overprotective father to the title character: a slightly handicapped but perky little boy fish named Nemo.

One day, in an act of preadolescent rebellion, little Nemo defiantly ventures too close to a scuba diver's boat, and is quickly nabbed by a Sydney dentist on an outing to look for colorful new specimens to add to his office aquarium.

From here, the script cross-cuts between the adventures of Marlin as he searches for his son with the help of a blue tang fish (with short-term memory loss) named Dory, and the plight of Nemo, as he tries to escape from his Stalag 17 of an aquarium.

In the process, the movie takes aim at both Disney's "Bambi" and "The Little Mermaid," but falls short of them because it doesn't have the first film's warm-blooded naturalism or the second film's Oscar-winning score and enchanting central character.

On the other hand, "Nemo" boasts a cast of enjoyable aquatic characters who mesh in a pleasing ensemble, and the repartee between the fussy father hero (voice of Albert Brooks) and his dingy companion (voice of Ellen DeGeneres) delightfully fuels their search.

We're also treated to some exhilarating animated sequences -- hip sea turtles surfing the East

 Australian Current, a perilous journey through a minefield of jelly fish, attacks by great white sharks, gluttonous seagulls and one somnambulantly lethal blue whale.

Throughout, the film is absolutely drunk with the hallucinogenic color and infinite variety of its undersea world, and dazzles us with computer-generated animation that has never looked quite so boldly exotic or shimmeringly beautiful.