My opinion on Pixar’s new sequel Finding Dory is moot since I’m the monster who really doesn’t like Finding Nemo. Now that you are done recoiling in horror, I will say that I think Finding Dory is at least a better movie, I guess. I mean, I laughed out loud a decent number of times while kind of being bored and wondering why they keep dragging the story out.
Most human beings, the kinds with souls who loved Finding Nemo, will probably think this is a lesser movie. Just a guess. Certainly the 7pm Thursday show being 95% packed suggests this movie will do just fine, despite the random creatures with human skin who aren’t super enthused about it.
In this sequel, short-term memory loss Dory remembers she has a mom and dad and, along with Marlin and Nemo, make a journey to find them. It’s a movie about living with your disabilities and coming to accept them, if you want to find a theme. And also that you can lose your parents horrifically one day and then forget about them completely… but maybe you can find them again.
The movie is reasonably touching and Dory’s memory problem is treated as a real sad problem. It’s a little maudlin at times in a Bad Pixard sort of way but, really, the sentimentality is not the movie’s problem.
The problem is largely the third act going on and on and on with increasingly weird action set pieces. I won’t say it’s unrealistic because that would be dumb nut I might say it’s head-scratchingly weird from a script standpoint. It seems to have a case of the Brave and even Up… where you get moms turned into bears and dogs flying airplanes because the screenwriters were on drugs or desperate to find something to fill the running time (which isn’t to say I hated Up or even Brave).
But, don’t forget, I’m a monster so take your kids, take yourself. I’m surely wrong.
There’s a cute short film in front of it called Piper – about a momma shore bird trying to to teach her chick to find and eat molusks between waves. It’s very gorgeous and pretty cute.
Score: 75