Finding Dory

“What if I forget you?”

Over a decade later, Pixar has released a sequel to one of its most beloved films. Finding Dory (a near reboot for new audiences, and an unwarranted, yet surprising sequel for fans of Finding Nemo) takes the underwater franchise to both familiar and new grounds while adapting Pixar’s now solid storytelling formula. You will laugh, you may cry. But in the end, you’ll realize Pixar’s increasingly obvious path of adopting Hollywood’s ideology of sequelizing everything. This contradicts Pixar’s original success of creating new imaginative worlds (unlike Disney’s practice of rehashing old fairy tales). Yes, Finding Dory isn’t a necessary sequel. But after having seen it in its opening weekend, I can’t seem to complain. The film is undoubtedly fun and Pixarian with its smart humor and emotional waves. And it’s actually nice to revisit some old characters other than Woody and Buzz.

In Finding Nemo, the emotional connection between father and son dominates the story as Nemo (Hayden Rolence) overcomes his weaknesses and Marlin (Albert Brooks) loosens his reign, placing more confidence in his son. Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) simply takes on the role of an assisting character. Just as Mater is Lightning McQueen’s goofy sidekick in Cars, Dory is Marlin’s goofball in Finding Nemo. But an interesting power shift occurs in Finding Dory, as audiences become more emotionally invested in Dory than in Marlin and Nemo combined. This shift in investment unfortunately falls flat in Cars 2 as Mater enters the world of espionage. Finding Dory succeeds where Cars 2 fails. Not only does Finding Dory successfully shift primary investment to a once secondary character, it does so without diminishing the franchise.

Marlin and Nemo are mostly static characters as Dory faces her past and short-term memory loss. They do little, other than to reinforce the central character’s strength (“What would Dory do?”) and that’s okay, mainly because the film introduces plenty of new environments and characters to fill in the gap. Hank (Ed O’Neill), the gruff old septopus steals the show as Dory’s new straight man and emotional wall. Destiny (Kaitlin Olson), Bailey (Ty Burrell), and Fluke (Idris Elba) are welcomed new faces as well, and each serve their purpose in the film, providing laughs and assisting the protagonists on their adventures.

The film is so rich in characters and beautifully animated that it’s easy to overlook some of the obvious flaws. The main one being the catalyst of the story. The reason Dory, Marlin, and Nemo journey off across the ocean again seems weak and a bit rushed. Why would Marlin leave safety and take his son with him on a fools errand of tracking down Dory’s family when they have barely anything to go on? Is it really in his character to risk it all just because he can relate to Dory missing her supposed family? There’s nothing that shoves them to start their adventure—the stakes just aren’t that high compared to Nemo being taken and Marlin at risk of losing his only son and ending up completely alone.

Finding Dory only starts to pick up once Dory is taken away on a boat to a fish hospital, but this is where another problem arises. The best parts of Finding Nemo are the adventures and conflicts that Marlin faces in open sea. The tank scenes with Nemo and the volcano ritual are definitely not what made Finding Nemo such a classic. But Finding Dory takes the tank setting a step further with a marine exhibit, confining the characters to limited spaces to interact in for the majority of the movie. As a result, any remaining sense of unknown danger and adventure plummets.

Also, unfortunately for Finding Dory, previous Pixar films (Inside Out, Up) have set the emotional bar at noteworthy heights. Dory’s plight of finding her family while remembering them little-by-little in emotional bursts tugs at the heartstrings, but isn’t quite enough to get the waterworks rolling. And believe me, I tried. Watching Bing Bong and Riley’s memories in Inside Out commanded a stream of uncontrollable tears. Spot leaving Arlo for the surrogate human family in The Good Dinosaur conjured a couple wet ones too. But the tears refused to flow while watching Dory. Dory’s arc, while compassionate, is no crane scene in Toy Story 3. And as if the film senses its mediocre tearjerker attempt, the story quickly shifts attention to a somewhat exciting car chase, attempting to mimic what Buzz and gang have already pulled off in Toy Story 2 (someone at the wheel while someone else instructs which way to turn). Finding Dory does manage to differentiate its car chase scene from that of Toy Story 2, only to borrow from Inception's first level dream sequence of a slow motion drop from a bridge to the water, with epic music and the works.

While most would agree that Finding Dory isn’t a groundbreaking sequel, like Toy Story 3, the fish tale is still a pretty great Pixar film. It’s better than The Good Dinosaur, holds a bit of its own against Toy Story 2, but admittedly, like its protagonist, is a bit forgetful next to its predecessor, Finding Nemo.

Chad: 3.5

Alex: 4

Overall Rating: 4/5