I've had mixed opinions about Pixar's sequels over the years. While Toy Story has always done well, Monsters University underwhelmed and Cars 2 was just bad. The most disappointing Pixar movie though was The Good Dinosaur simply because it felt so empty. There was the backbone of a story but the world wasn't filled with things on the periphery the way the best of their movies are.
That is not a concern with Finding Dory. It's super populated. Obviously, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), Marlin (Albert Brooks), and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) are back. So are several favorites like Crush and the seagulls (for cameos, at least). The good people at Pixar have no trouble finding a variety a new characters from the Ocean too. Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy are brought in to voice Dory's parents. Kaitlin Olson is a near-sighted whale shark who is old friends with Dory. Ty Burrell is a beluga with a broken echo locator. Idris Elba and Dominic West (a reunion from The Wire that can't be an accident) are some possessive sea lions. Ed O'Neill makes the biggest impression as an Octopus who just wants to be left alone. All these characters as well as countless others keep every scene lively and layered.
As the title implies, this movie follows Dory as the central character, and her short term memory loss turns out to be incredibly useful for an inciting event. The movie begins with Dory as an adorable child with her loving parents. It follows her as she gets separated from them, searching for years but not remembering what for, until she finally meets Marlin. It skips to a year later when something triggers to Dory to remember that she has a family. Marlin and Nemo join her on a quest to find her parents that leads them across the ocean to an aquarium where she grew up. They become separated along the way and spend the rest of the movie moving from exhibit to exhibit to reunite with each other as well as find Dory's parents. Dory employs the help of a grouchy octopus (O'Neill), her old friend Destiny (Olson), and new friend Bailey (Burrell). Marlin and Nemo get help from the sea lions and a peculiar bird named Becky.
I'm a little mixed on the execution of the story. The screenplay takes a lot of shortcuts. The journey across the ocean, which is the bulk of Finding Nemo, is covered in a single scene, which is a little suspect. My big issue is that cages and tanks mean nothing. Nemo escaping the dentist's fish tank was a herculean task in the first movie. In Finding Dory, birds and octopuses routinely have cups for transport and fish are willing to jump out of the water to flop on the ground to another body of water. The logistics of it all are annoyingly easy.
That's all made up for by how right it gets the emotional beats. Little Dory losing her parents is heartbreaking and every bit as effective as Marlin losing Nemo's mom in the first movie. There's a moment later on when Dory is lost in the pipes of the aquarium that genuinely scared me more than any horror movie I've seen recently. That alone is pretty incredible to pull off. From a studio of talking animals, cars, and toys, I think Pixar is fine with the trade off of a little logic in favor of genuine emotion.
Sequels are hard (as I said just last week). Finding Dory isn't perfect and falls victim to many of the same issues as most sequels (doing too much, going too big, rehashing jokes). Mostly, it's an enjoyable experience though. The voice cast is as good as it gets. DeGeneres in particular injects so much heart into Dory that it's easy to invest in her emotional journey. This is packed with jokes both clever and sophomoric, obvious and subtle. And it looks great. I take that for granted with Pixar and I shouldn't. This and even more so the short before it are impressive. This movie is everything I hoped for. The only thing that makes it look disappointing is the comparison to the other exceptional films in the Pixar library.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment