Review: Finding Dory

A year after the events of “Finding Nemo”, and Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) starts to have memories of her childhood and her parents (voiced by Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton). She remembers that they were separated years ago at the Marine Life Institute, and so she, Nemo (voiced by Hayden Rolence), and Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) go off to try and locate them. Unfortunately, being that this is a Pixar movie, circumstances see Dory getting separated from Nemo and Marlin and having to go it alone with her terrible short-term memory issues.

I came late to the party on “Finding Nemo” (about 10 years late) but really loved it. Everything except for…Dory. Dory I felt was a one-joke idea that quickly got annoying. This 2016 Disney/Pixar sequel from directors Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story”, “Finding Nemo”) and Angus MacLane (an animator with his first feature-length co-directorial credit) is all about the absent-minded little Pacific Regal Blue Tang, and so I had the feeling this one was gonna be a nightmare for me. As it turns out, it’s significantly lesser than the first film, but nowhere near as painful as expected. In fact, Dory isn’t even the problem with the film. As irritating as the character is, her circumstance does lead to some genuine sadness and pathos to her story. It’s almost like “Memento” for fish. However, when you remove that aspect, what you actually get is the same basic story/plot as not only the first film, but let’s face it the “Toy Story” films all had similar plots to this too. It’s another plot where someone goes in search of someone else, and involves an escape having to be mounted. I’m a bit sick of all that by now.

However, for a film with so much against it for me, it ends up being at least painless and watchable. The non-human animation is, like last time, stellar. It’s such a pretty, coloured, and detailed-looking film whilst still managing to look like a cartoon to some degree rather than total photorealism. I could actually watch a whole film with Young Dory, who is adorable and nowhere near as irritating as her Ellen DeGeneres-voiced adult self. Even as an adult, Ellen manages to dial it down a bit and makes Dory a little less annoying this time around, which is good considering there’s so much more of her this time. Eugene Levy is terrific as the voice of Dory’s dad, and it was great to see Nemo and his worrying father (voiced by the perfect Albert Brooks) back for this one. I also enjoyed the amusing vocal performance by Ty Burrell as a whale. In fact, I think the voice work in this is overall better than in the first film.

As I said, this is one extremely sad story, especially early on. You do feel for the poor fish, though as the plot became more and more familiar from previous films my attention (excuse the irony) came and went frequently. It doesn’t help that the film has a serious lack of Nemo and his father, who I liked a whole lot more than Dory. I also felt that the film, possibly inadvertently, paints The Marine Life Institute (and to an extent Sigourney Weaver) in a more ambiguous light than it should. It’s the Marine Life Institute which is at the centre of the film’s rescue/escape plot. Meanwhile, as much as I will lavish most of the film’s animation with great praise, I can’t do that for all of the animation in the film. The same year that “Rogue One” gave us near photo-realistic Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher, has this otherwise stunning film giving us typical Pixar fat blobby pink people. That’s a shame.

Although not nearly as enjoyable as the first film, there was already so much working against this film for me and I was glad that it’s not nearly as irritating as expected. I still didn’t care for the very formulaic and familiar plotline and I wish Nemo and Marlin were in the film more, but this isn’t bad. It’s just not good, either and far from Pixar’s best (though far from the lows of “Ratatouille” and the overrated “WALL-E”). It looks absolutely gorgeous, however and the kiddies will likely enjoy it, especially if they love Dory. The derivative screenplay is by Stanton, Bob Peterson (“Finding Nemo”, “Up”), and Victoria Strouse (the terrible mystery-thriller “New Best Friend”), but should really credit every screenwriter of the previous film and the “Toy Story” franchise.

Rating: C+