Just Keep Watching

Conditions: Reheated Leftovers

Film Review: Finding Dory

Many years later Pixar and director Andrew Stanton return to their successful fish movie to grind out a sequel.  I was under the impression Pixar usually stayed away from sequels, but it seems that attitude is slowly eroding with time.  So back we go underwater.  A year has passed since Nemo had his adventure, and he and Marvin are learning to live with Dory, as full of enthusiasm as ever but also dealing from that short term memory problem.  Flashbacks help fill in the details of how her parents try to help and teach her to deal with her problem but she gets lost, and grows up essentially alone.

Now suddenly she is struck by a flashback, and immediately she is off to find her family.  Amazingly, Nemo and Martin come along with her and the new adventure is on.  What follows is a series of surprises and revelations that lead us to a special water park/aquarium where, reliably and repeatedly informed by none other than Sigorney Weaver, sick fish are cared for and released back into the wild.  Here Dory meets a curmudgeonly octopus voiced by Ed O'Neil who helps her get to the aquarium where her parents likely are, in exchange for helping him escape back to the sea.  It's an odd pairing, but somehow as with most things from Pixar, it works pretty well.

The overall agenda seems to be about trusting your instincts and taking risks about the things that matter, which is nice and all.  I'm not sure people or kids in general should be taking the big risks Dory seems to take, or cause Martin and Nemo to take because of her, but hopefully everyone understands film cliche's and such.  The film is very well made, as you'd expect, and everyone is giving their best.  You just get the feeling that they had to stretch a bit to come up with an idea for a sequel, and then pad it out a bit as well.  Three flops out of five.


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