Movie Review Steven Colgan English

Movie Review 1
A popular topic that has been bobbing about the internet
these days: Will the summer of Hollywood’s sequel and
prequel box-office discontent bounce back with the arrival
of “Finding Dory,” Pixar and Disney’s double-dip back flip
into the same animated pool of undersea beings that
propelled 2003’s wondrously endearing “Finding Nemo”?

Therefore, it is a relief to note that the follow-up has plenty

of emotional hooks, some great lines and is no stinker,
despite simply following what amounts to the same plot
current as before except to the Pacific Coast of California
instead of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. If “Finding
Nemo” felt like a blissful day at the beach, then “Finding
Dory” is an eventful afternoon at an aquatic park—or, in this
case, the Marine Life Institute that, as the omniscient recorded voice of Sigourney Weaver re-assures any
PC-oriented visitors to the facility, is dedicated not to human amusement but to “Rescue, Rehabilitation
and Release.” The result might be less fulfilling this time, but “Finding Dory” is ultimately worth the
voyage.

Wisely, the film takes full advantage of what was “Finding Nemo’s” greatest asset besides its lushly multi-
hued underwater inhabitants and plant life: Ellen DeGeneres’ buoyant spirit and child-like glee as she
vocally gave life to Dory, the forgetful yet fearless blue tang whose struggles with short-term memory loss
proved to be a crucial plus whenever the going got tough as stressed-out daddy clownfish Marlin searched
for headstrong young son Nemo. After all, nothing is more freeing than barely being able to summon your
past, which is why the impulsive Dory is so good at acting in the moment.

It can be a dicey proposition to upgrade a comic-relief supporting player into a headliner. But much like
Robin Williams, who so memorably riffed up a blue streak as the Genie in “Aladdin,” DeGeneres and her
sometimes goofy, sometimes giddy persona continues to be a perfect fit for the role that provided the
uplifting salt-water soul of “Finding Nemo” and pretty much does the same here as Marlin (a returning
Albert Brooks) and Nemo (replacement Hayden Rolence) swim alongside her on a new journey a year
after the first.

The story is not as fresh of a catch as the original, even if the script is again by Andrew Stanton (along with
co-writer Victoria Strouse), who once more directs with an assist from Angus MacLane. Ultimately, there
is too much reliance on logic-defying Saturday-morning TV cartoon action as the main characters swim
about by scooting through pipes and flopping from one liquid vessel to another at the institute. It was
somewhat believable when the gang of fish led by Willem Dafoe’s world-weary Gill staged a great escape
from the tank at the dentist’s office in “Finding Nemo.” But the sequel stretches beyond credibility when
newcomer octopus Hank (a testy tangle of tentacles with chameleonic powers voiced by “Modern
Family’s” Ed O’Neill) is somehow able to maneuver a runaway truck on a crowded highway when he can’t
reach the pedals or see over the dashboard.

1
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

What your brain might not accept, however, your heart just might. “Finding Nemo” was propelled by its
perceptive depiction of a single parent’s overwhelming need to protect a child, especially one with an
undersized fin, instead of letting him fend for himself and gain a sense of independence. Here, Stanton
calls upon the same sort of primal instinct when we initially meet Dory as an innocent, big-eyed, kiddy-
voiced guppy whose concerned parents Charlie and Jenny (portrayed by Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton)
explain how she must always tell whoever she meets, “I have short-term memory loss.” Or, as she sweetly
calls it, “short-term remember-y loss.” Instead of her daffy-go-lucky grown-up self, Dory is a helpless tyke
whose recall vaporizes almost instantly because of her learning disability and she inevitably wanders off
into the undertow, leaving her despairing mom and dad behind to devastating effect.

The movie fully kicks in when the older Dory experiences an electric jolt of a flashback and, with that brief
flicker, realizes she actually has parents. And off she goes, with ever-grumpy Marlin and supportive Nemo
following soon after, to locate her family. She might be looking for her parents, but Dory is really
unearthing her own identity and manages to stir up other defining memories along the way, no matter
how fleetingly. That includes the sources of her inspirational motto, “Just keep swimming,” and how she
came to speak “whale.”

Some old favorites from “Finding Nemo” float by including that cool turtle dude Crush and son Squirt, fish-
school instructor Mr. Ray and those “Mine! Mine! Mine!”-chanting seagulls. But few of the new
characters, which include a brain-addled beluga whale (Ty Burrell of “Modern Family”) and a near-sighted
whale shark (Kaitlin Olson), make a lasting impression besides a pair of lazy Cockney sea lions (Idris Elba
and Dominic West, together again after being on opposite sides of the law on “The Wire”) rehabbing at
the institute who only stir whenever their silent crazy-eyed cohort Gerald (who appears related to Ed the
hyena from “The Lion King”) dares lay a flipper on their rock.

Except for Marlin, who learns a valuable lesson in empathy after hurling a hurtful observation at Dory
when she inadvertently puts Nemo in harm’s way, almost every creature encountered from a bird-brained
loon to an immense chatty clam that recalls Audrey II in “Little Shop of Horrors” gladly helps out our
heroine with her mission. You can guess whether it’s accomplished or not, but let’s just say there is a
have-a-hanky-on-hand happy ending. Actually, there are two or three happy endings since the filmmakers
don’t know when enough is enough. That includes a coda that requires wading through a waterfall of end
credits that nonetheless is worth the wait.

This moderately entertaining film has so many parallels with 2003’s Finding Nemo that it seems less like
a sequel and more like a clone.

2
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

Movie Review 2

Dory, of course, is course the regal blue tang fish voiced by Ellen
DeGeneres in Pixar’s 2003 animation Finding Nemo. She has
short-term memory loss, something between disability and
adorable quirk. But with the ability to retrieve crucial glimpses
of memory, and surrounded as she is by friendly helpful souls,
Dory is basically not much different from any other wide-eyed,
vulnerable, child-like Pixar character.

Now, Nemo director and co-writer Andrew Stanton has brought

Dory back for a moderately entertaining, borderline-pointless sequel and star-showcase. The echoes and
parallels of the first film are so obvious, it could be that semi-amnesiac Dory is Stanton’s satirical comment
on the unending parade of studio franchise sequels which have to be pitched at a consumer base whose
memory loss is just severe enough that they can find them exciting and novel, and yet not so extreme that
they aren’t reassured by the familiar characters and stories.

Finding Dory begins just one short year after the action of the first film is supposed to have ended, which
creates a slightly disturbing return-from-Narnia temporal effect for those among us who are parents and
whose children were toddlers when they first thrilled to Finding Nemo but are now edging teenagerdom.
Dory is still voiced by DeGeneres, and Nemo’s dad Marlin is voiced by Albert Brooks, whose warm
performance is a career highlight for him. But the voice-breaking effects of time and puberty mean that
little Nemo is no longer voiced by Alexander Gould (he is now 22) but by the 10-year-old Hayden Rolence.

The quest narrative is revived and redoubled. Dory goes in search of the parents whom she now realises
she lost shortly before she encountered Marlin in the first film; then she gets into trouble, so Marlin and
Nemo go in search of her. Where Nemo once found himself in a dentist’s fishtank (a brilliantly judged
comic contraction of his natural habitat), the law of sequels means that things have to be bigger if not
necessarily better and Dory finds herself lost in a huge aquatic theme park (based on the Monterey Bay
Aquarium in California) where Sigourney Weaver surreally does the announcements and where, by a
stroke of good fortune, Dory’s parents appear also to be. Nobody mentions Nemo’s late mother this time
around.

There is always great audio chemistry between DeGeneres and Brooks: her voice pitched naturally high
and repeatedly pushing up to a soprano-note of fear, with Brooks’s voice slightly lower but also on the
edge of keening with anxiety and self-doubt.

Two likeable new characters are Destiny (voiced by Kaitlin Olson), a whale shark with a Mr Magoo-type
tendency to bump into things with whom Dory has a natural rapport, using her whooping, ululating
“whale” voice; and also Bailey (Ty Burrell), a crotchety, hypochondriac beluga whale who is convinced that
the large bump on his head is the symptom of some terrible problem rather than the natural order of
things.

There is also an octopus called Hank who befriends Dory; she pedantically calls him a septopus because
he has lost one of his legs. Hank is able to survive outside water and camouflage himself like an octopus
in the real world – although these skills are so pronounced in his case as to give him what amount to

3
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

superpowers. Dory has a nice line when she notes that he is not very sympathetic for someone who has
three hearts.

Finding Dory is a sequel which appears to have been cloned from the first film using an impossibly smart
and sophisticated process of concept development and audience-demographic research. It’s watchable,
with all the wonderful animation technique that we are in danger of taking for granted. But it’s basically
a footnote or retread of the movie which melted everyone’s heart 12 years ago.

4
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

Movie Review 3
Spare a thought for those wildly successful bazillionaires at Pixar. Yes, the
Californian dream factory is one of the most respected studios in history —
a virtual byword for a specific brand of boundless creativity — but in recent
years, and in anticipation of their 17th feature, they seem perennially to
have something to prove. That the envelope-pushing geniuses are locked
in an endless competition, against not just the likes of DreamWorks or the
resurgent animation arm of parent company Disney, but their own legacy
— a 20-year hot streak of unimprovable Oscar-winning hits.

It may be the most human story Pixar has ever told

There have been muttered charges of sequelitis (with Toy Story 4 and Cars 3 on the way), alongside the
general feeling of a swinging pendulum where, for every soaring Inside Out, there’s a corresponding The
Good Dinosaur, a tepidly received curio that represented the studio’s first loss at the box office. But now,
into these choppy waters, swims Finding Dory — an emotionally complex, beautifully wrought piece of
vintage Pixar that, 13 years after Finding Nemo, delivers a warmly familiar formula that still manages to
hold hidden depths.

It helps that, like Pixar’s pitches, there’s an elegant simplicity to the way the plot turns the first film on its
head. After Piper, a nicely paired short about a plucky seabird, we meet Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) as a cute
(but still troublingly forgetful) kid who mysteriously loses her parents then wanders the ocean for years,
trying to plug the holes in her sieve-like brain until she crashes into a panicked clownfish called Marlin
(Albert Brooks). This early revelation — Dory’s back story is that she basically hasn’t got one — is a potent
reminder that Andrew Stanton (the returning Finding Nemo writer-director who also gave us WALL-E’s
lonely robot in a trash-piled dystopia) is unafraid to add tragic undercurrents to something that’s
notionally a family film.

Flash forward a year and, after the events of Finding Nemo, Dory has formed a happy family of sorts with
Marlin and his son (Hayden Rolence) until some flashbacks to fragmented childhood memories have her
seeking a parental reunion of her own. Repaying the faith shown by Dory in that first ocean-spanning
adventure, her new friends join her and — by way of an encounter with a furious giant squid — find
themselves at Californian aquarium and conservation centre the Marine Life Institute. Suffice to say, their
plan to find Dory’s mum and dad (expertly voiced by Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy, respectively) does
not go smoothly. And it’s here that the film truly sparks to life, swapping its gentle expository opening
scenes for a smart journey into Dory’s faltering mind — like a maritime take on Memento — that also
doubles as a thrilling headlong dive into a micro community that’s as vividly drawn as Sunnyside Daycare
in Toy Story 3 or, for that matter, the dentist’s office in Finding Nemo.

It’s also a showcase for relentlessly funny dialogue, stunning set-pieces and a high-quality stable of new
voice actors. Dominic West and Idris Elba stage an unlikely The Wire reunion as Rudder and Fluke, a pair
of heroically lazy sea lions, Modern Family’s Ty Burrell is excellent as neurotic beluga whale Bailey and
Kaitlin Olson engages as near-sighted whale shark Destiny. But it’s Dory’s guide through the pipes and
tanks of this Sea World stand-in — a grouchy chameleonic octopus called Hank, voiced by Ed O’Neill —
who proves to be the star attraction. Both technical marvel (the first shot of his shifting, suckered body

5
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

took six months to construct) and gruff mentor figure, Hank is also a canny story tool — enabling Dory to
break out of the water and driving some of the final act’s outlandish stunts.

Yes, as characters are repeatedly separated and reunited, a touch of lost-fish fatigue sets in. But only the
terminally churlish will be able to resist something so strikingly strange, sly — one showstopping moment
shows the supposedly sedate atmosphere of an aquarium touching-pool as a battlefield of children’s
plunging hands and cowering sea creatures — and gleefully inventive. And at the heart of the story is
Dory’s wrenching emotional journey. Despite that expansive ocean, it’s an intimate, hopeful tale of
perseverance, friendship and leaping the sea wall of your personal limitations. Don’t be fooled by all those
fish. It may be the most human story Pixar has ever told.

6
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

Movie Review 4

It may have been 13 years since Disney and Pixar's Finding Nemo
hit the big screen, but writer-director Andrew Stanton, co-
director Angus MacLane and company haven't missed a beat
with Finding Dory, which picks up just one year after the events
of the first film. Only this time the focus has shifted to
everybody's favorite blue fish, voiced by Ellen Degeneres, much
to good effect. While Pixar's accumulating IPs have gotten a little
"samey" in recent years, Finding Dory makes the most of its
underwater setting and offers a heartwarming, if familiar sequel.

In the new film, Dory suddenly recalls memories from her

childhood, back when she was living with her parents Jenny
(Diane Keaton) and Charlie (Eugene Levy). Determined to find
them, she and her friends Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo
(Hayden Rolence) set out in search of Morro Bay, California,
where Dory last remembers seeing her family. However, when
they arrive, they realize that setting up a reunion may be trickier than they thought.

In the early going, Finding Dory follows a lot of the same story beats as Finding Nemo, and it feels
somewhat repetitive as a result. Like the first film, the sequel opens with a tragic backstory and jumps
ahead to the Great Barrier Reef, where our heroes set out on their next big adventure. Before you know
it, they're catching waves with sea turtles again and dealing with predators a thousand times their size --
but instead of vegetarian sharks, they're going up against a mindless squid.

It isn't until Dory and her friends arrive at their destination that the sequel really starts to come into its
own. Whereas Finding Nemo was mostly set in the Pacific Ocean, the majority of Finding Dory takes place
at the Monterey Marine Life Institute, where the gang runs into all manner of exhibits and sea creatures.
Not only is this where the story significantly deviates from the original, but it's also the backdrop for some
of the film's most creative and exciting set pieces.

Obviously, Dory was the breakout character of Finding Nemo, as she offered the biggest laughs of that
film. In the sequel, some of her quirkier traits like constantly singing and speaking in "whale" are given
more context, and in some cases they even strike an emotional chord. Dory's story arc is also considerably
more tear-jerking than last time, especially when it comes to her parents. Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo
develop their own rapport, although the father/son duo is pushed to the sidelines a bit in favor of
furthering Dory's journey.

Then there are the new characters, which are also great, including Ed O'Neill as Hank the octopus (or
rather "septopus"), Kaitlin Olson as Destiny the whale shark, Ty Burrell as Baily the beluga whale, Idris Elba
and Dominic West as a pair of sea lions, and Sigourney Weaver as -- well, I won't spoil it, but the actress
nabs the best recurring joke of the whole picture. That said, it's O'Neill's character who really steals the
show. In a lot of ways, he fills Marlin's role as the straight man, in service of Dory's comic.

7
Movie Review Steven Colgan English

Of course, it goes without saying that Finding Dory is visually spectacular. Just when you thought CG water
couldn't look any better, Pixar's team went and raised the bar again with their latest offering. Between
the impeccable lighting and photorealistic textures, this may be the studio's most technically brilliant
movie to date. (You'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you see the fabled "Jewel" of Morro Bay.)

In the end, Finding Dory flourishes where most animated sequels flounder (pun intended). Rather than
rehashing the best parts of the original, it takes the characters on a new and exciting journey that's both
harrowing and inspiring. Granted, the film occasionally echoes parts of Finding Nemo, but, again, it really
picks up in that second half and delivers plenty of laughs to keep viewers of all ages entertained.

Did Finding Nemo really need a sequel? Probably not. But Finding Dory deftly manages to breathe new
life into Pixar's most popular fish, while also introducing a school of lively newcomers as well. In the same
way that Monsters University added more depth to its colorful characters, so too does Finding Dory --
perhaps even more so -- and it's a testament to Andrew Stanton and team that this underwater world
feels just as dynamic as it did back in 2003.