[yasr_overall_rating]
The friendly-but-forgetful blue tang fish reunites with her loved ones, and everyone learns a few things about the real meaning of family along the way.
It is almost impossible to say anything negative about Pixar. Their films have delighted and entertained for over twenty marvelous years and with the exception of the “Cars” movies (I’m sorry but there’s just nothing adorable and cute about talking vehicles but I commend them for trying something new), everything else has been a technical and emotional wonder. Although “Finding Dory” is, in many ways, a rehash of “Finding Nemo,” it brings back the delightful and memorable array of characters from that film and puts them out to sea, so to speak. This time round however, it is the forgetful Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) who goes missing and it is up to her friend Marlin (Albert Brooks) and his son Nemo (Hayden Rolence) to find her.
As the movie begins, we see young Dory (Sloane Murray) accompanied by her mother Jenny (Diane Keaton) and father Charlie (Eugene Levy) as they try to help her deal with her short-term memory loss. They sing songs with her and recite phrases they hope will help her remember the way home should she ever get lost but one day, she accidentally gets sucked into the undertow surrounding their lagoon and is whisked out to sea. She spends years looking for her parents but to no avail. It is at this point that we see moments from the first movie when she meets Marlin and Nemo and this gets us all caught up.
Dory sporadically begins to remember phrases and images from her childhood and when she has a brief flashback of her home and its exact location, “the jewel of Morro Bay, California,” with Marlin and Nemo’s help, she is determined to find her way back, once and for all. Naturally, the best laid plans do not go smoothly and Dory gets separated from Marlin and Nemo. After being scooped up out of the water by two employees of the nearby Monterey Marine Life Institute, Marlin and Nemo quickly discover that at this location, they catch marine wildlife, ensure their survival and then eventually release them back into the ocean but in some instances, they are shipped out to other parts of the country, something which quickly becomes evident from the quarantine tag they put on Dory.
Once inside though, she makes friends with Hank (Ed O’Neill), an octopus who has his heart set on an aquarium in Cleveland where he hopes to be shipped off to so he can live out the rest of his days in peace. In order to get there however, he requires Dory’s quarantine tag, something she offers him in return for helping her find her parents. So the stage is set and with a Cleveland-bound truck, ready to depart at dawn, Hank must get Dory home if he wants to see the east coast.
Along the way, we meet an assortment of new characters including two sea lions, Fluke (Idris Elba) and Rudder (Dominic West), Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale who is abominable with echolocation, a childhood friend of Dory’s, Destiny (Kaitlin Olson), a near-sighted whale shark, and Sigourney Weaver’s voice. The one aspect of the film that grows tiresome, quickly, is the “family is most important” element that is thrust in our faces throughout the entire movie. “Finding Nemo” successfully got that point across but here, it’s almost as if the filmmakers realized that 13 years had passed since the first movie and had to make up for lost time. Family IS most important but once or twice is more than enough to discern.
Pixar excels, once again, in the technical department and it is amazing, the amount of detail allocated to every single frame, from underwater foliage to the individual suckers on each of Hank’s arms, Pixar obviously spared no expense. The voice actors are outstanding, with Ed O’Neill stealing the show as the cantankerous but lovable Hank. The kids at the press screening I attended, which outnumbered most of the adults, lapped everything up and you can’t help smile and chuckle when almost every child in the theater erupts into laughter, at whatever is happening onscreen. In the end, I couldn’t help but compare “Finding Dory” to the “Taken” series. “Taken” and “Finding Nemo” were both terrific, with great action and suspense, “Taken 2” and “Finding Dory” were enjoyable and entertaining, but by “Taken 3,” you wondered just who else could be captured? It just worries me that a third “Finding” movie is hiding right around the corner, unless of course, they somehow manage to bring Liam Neeson on board. In that case, if you still don’t like the idea, he will look for you, he will find you, and he will make you like it!
In theaters June 17th
