"Why did she have to die?"

There they were, the teary eyes of a four-year-old. Nemo's mom, perishing in the stomach of a barracuda mere minutes into the movie. What could we answer?

"Well, you see, without her dying there is no story. If she doesn't die, Marlin, Nemo's father, probably doesn't become so overprotective. And if he doesn't become overprotective, Nemo doesn't swim away and get captured by humans. And if he doesn't get captured by humans — that's it, no movie, just one happy fish family (one happy Jewish fish family... oh so Jewish, it's Albert Brooks!)..."

We didn't say that. Instead, we hugged the four-year-old.

"Don't worry," we said. "It's just a cartoon. It'll get better at the end."

"Will it," the four-year-old asked. "Will it?"

We sighed. We wiped off our own tears. And here we thought it couldn't get worse than The Lion King...