Finding Dory is directed by Andrew Stanton and is the long-awaited sequel to 2003's Finding Nemo. Set a year after the events of that film, Finding Dory sees the attention shift onto one of Pixar's most loveable side characters ever Dory, a fish suffering from short-term memory loss. However, as she begins to remember fragments of her past life with her parents, she along with Marlin and Nemo set out on a journey across the ocean to find her missing family. I'm unashamedly a huge fan of Pixar and Finding Nemo was one of those animated films I would pop in and watch over and over again. So naturally, I went into Finding Dory with a healthy mix of excitement and scepticism.
To my surprise, Finding Dory is actually a lot better than I was anticipating. It's a consistently entertaining animated film which caught my attention from the very start and didn't drop it until the credits started to roll. There's enough in here to make you laugh and cry, to make you excited and emotional. In actuality, it's a very charming movie but charming in a way which feels smart as opposed to incredibly forced. It's a perfect animated film in that it can work for people of all ages, be them very young, very old or somewhere in between.
Right off that bat I think the animation, while not as breath-taking as it was for the 2003 original, is fantastic, vibrant and colourful with immense detail put into the sea and land environments as well as the character's themselves. I don't think I'll ever stop rambling on how well Pixar can animate the eyes, but they seem to have it down to an absolute science. It's a wonderful film to look at, but that's what we come to expect with the standard of animation these days being so high. But what makes this movie great like other Pixar efforts is it's perfect blend of action, comedy and heart, on top of some really good voice acting and some memorable characters.
Ellen DeGeneres as Dory is stellar and is the standout in a movie filled with really great amalgamations of voice acting and character animation. But what this movie does so well is understand who the character of Dory is. Let's face it, if we had to hang around Dory all day she would irritate us to no end. But what makes Dory such a good character is that even though you acknowledge how much she'd irritate you, you can't help but empathize with her. When things go wrong for Dory, you feel the desperation she does. When things go well for her, you can't help but silently cheer. And that's what a main character she be, likeable, because if you weren't routing for Dory this movie would fall flat on it's face.
It was also nice to see Marlin and Nemo back in the movie in a way which didn't feel forced, in fact their presence their felt organic to the story the movie was trying to tell. But the other characters who will stick in your mind after you watch this movie are some equally hilarious and memorable side characters. Pixar always seems to create really great side characters which propel the story along and add in good amounts of comedic relief, and Finding Dory is no exception. Hank the Septopus is a brilliant addition as he and Dory's dynamic is one of the film's obvious strengths. Other great additions include Destiny the Whale-shark and Bailey the beluga, but my absolute favourite was this clam character Marlin and Nemo came across, who actually made me laugh more than anything else in this entire movie.
But like other Pixar movies what really makes this movie hit home is how emotionally relatable it can be for people of all ages. While I don't think the movie's emotional moments hit quite as hard as I think they were intending them to (compared to films like Inside Out), they still work and they do give you the feels when it is supposed to. Despite not really making me cry or all that upset, it still works on an emotional level as it does make you feel something, or at least it did for me. On top of this, Finding Dory is a very smartly written film when it comes to how it presents and teaches kids about disability. I think this movie can teach kids valuable lessons; the first being how disabled people can make it without being totally dependant, but the second being how it can be acceptable to make light of a disability you may have. Sometimes, disability is not all doom and gloom and I really appreciated the angle Pixar went with it.
My only true issue with this film is that because this story is trying to be bigger and crazier than Finding Nemo, the situations and scenarios our main characters end up in are incredibly bizarre. On top of this, they almost always seem to place them in life-or-death type situations, which the characters don't seem all that concerned about. It made for a varied, intriguing and well-paced film but it still went against the characterisations they had built up in the previous film. Aside from one minor complaint, I have nothing but praise for Finding Dory.
It's a fairly short review but its a fairly simple movie to whittle down. It's consistently entertaining, has a perfect mix of action/adventure, mystery/intrigue, laughs and emotional moments to give you a varied and fun movie-going experience, and is accessible and enjoyable for people of all ages. It doesn't try to be as creative or original as Inside Out, but what it does do is make you believe that this was a necessary sequel to make and that there was a pretty cool story to be told. The animation's great, the voice work is brilliant, some of the side characters are really funny and memorable and it delicately presents social commentary on disability in a unique way which I didn't think could be done. It's a fine animation and one which deserves to make all the money that it is:
Rating - A-
Thanks for reading,
Matt
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