Film: Finding Dory

If you are looking for the perfect movie to entertain your children (as well as yourself and your grandma) this summer, look no further: Pixar’s Finding Dory is the perfect bait.

Who could forget Dory, the thin, blue Paracanthurus hepatus with severe short-term memory loss who in Finding Nemo kindly helped the clown fish Marlin to find his lost son Nemo? She speaks Whale and has the perfect solution to get out of any desperate situation: just keep swimming. In Finding Dory, she has been promoted to the star of the show. This forgetful fish suddenly glimpses a memory of her parents and decides to go and find them. The two clown fish from the last film decide to help Dory, but the computer animation doesn’t get really good until she loses her friends and finds herself in an aquatic zoo where she makes new friends. Octopus Hank has a very good chance of becoming one of the top ten best-loved Pixar characters. He is a bit of a grouch, but with a heart of gold and he’s a more impressive escape artist than Harry Houdini. Because the octopus is missing one tentacle, Dory calls him a septopus.



Like at least half of all Pixar’s films, Finding Dory is about parents and children (learning about) letting go of one another and finding each other again, but also that minor disabilities (a missing arm, craziness, underdeveloped fins, or bad memory) are no obstacle to an exciting life. Pixar fun always also has a message. And these films never lack tons of drama, action, adventure, humour, and emotion, and their colourful, detailed computer animation is still second to none. Nevertheless, Finding Dory does not leave you with the same glorious feeling of amazement and intense empathy that Finding Nemo elicited. It is not new anymore, and at the end, the unoriginal climax forestalls some potentially very moving scenes. But don’t let that stop you. Pixar presents a new batch of fresh fish, so we’re off to a great summer.

FINDING DORY
US, 2016, dir.: Andrew Stanton & Angus MacLane, 97 min.