Finding Dory is the new movie from Pixar animation studios and is the long awaited sequel to the smash hit Finding Nemo.
The big question on everyone’s lips was ‘Is this going to be a Cars 2 or a Toy Story 2?’ Personally, it’s somewhere in the middle.
The film is set only 6 months after the events of the first film and Dory is still struggling with her infamous memory loss, however something she sees sparks memories of her parents and where they might be. So she, Marlin and Nemo set off to find them. The journey will lead them to an Aquarium where the vast majority of the film is set, on the way they meet large variety of sea-creatures and that’s it.
Ok, so it’s very pretty, the music is great, the voice cast is very good because they don’t have any A-list stars (Ellen DeGeneres being the exception) and it does a good job of not overtly repeating the first film. However it never reaches the heights of both its predecessor or Pixars best films.
The new characters have the best lines and scenes, the colour changing octopus Hank has multiple impressive scenes where he is swinging from pipes and hiding in plain sight. How and octopus can stay out of the water for so long is beyond me though. There are two sea lions voiced by Dominic West and Idris Elba so for the Wire fan in me that was fun (and short lived) and amazingly only one returning character other than the main three fish. The best supporting characters for me were two whales, one who doesn’t know how to use his sonar and the other who is short sighted. The bickering between these two is genuinely funny and I would love to have seen more of them.
When I said ‘not overtly repeating’ I was being serious, of course similar plot points are going to be recycled in a film called ‘Finding Dory’ but it was done to a level that you couldn’t see the ending a mile off only when it was just about to hit you. If anything it was less predictable than the first movie. One thing to note, and this is not a criticism, is that there was a surprisingly large amount of human interaction in a movie about fish. Also, about halfway into this movie I realised something and that’s that Nemo and Marlin started to get on my nerves and become quite annoying.
The only thing that lessens my opinion of this film is the quality of the original movies Pixar makes. Barring two movies (Good Dinosaur and Bugs Life), Pixar have been some of the best story tellers in the industry for 20 years now and I woud’ve rather seen an original story than a re-tread. Yes it’s nice to see returning characters but I can’t help thinking that the time and money spent on this could’ve been used to make something on the level of Toy Story, The Incredibles, Inside Out and Wall-E and Finding Dory is a good movie but no way near any of those listed above.
