Finding Dory movie review

dir. by Andrew Stanton

After a long period of declining critical reception, Pixar made a massive comeback last year with the excellent Inside Out. Their latest effort, Finding Dory, is one of a few planned sequels to their most popular films. The film is too fun and charming to break their recent winning streak, but it's far from one of the studio's most inspired efforts, and especially after Inside Out, it seems especially lightweight and formulaic, delightful in the moment but not likely to be remembered in a week's time.


As a child, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) was separated from her parents due to suffering from short-term memory loss. Over time, she makes her way to the Great Barrier Reef, where she meets Marlin (Albert Brooks) and decides to help him find his son Nemo (Hayden Rolance), kicking off the events of Finding Nemo. Later, Dory is living in Marlin and Nemo's community when she suddenly remembers her parents, and with her friends' help, she journeys across the Pacific to find them.

Finding Dory doesn't waste much time on setup. After Dory sets her mind on finding her parents, the film quickly picks up its pace, briskly moving from set piece to set piece. With the world already established in the previous film, there are far fewer inventive ideas left for Dory to introduce, and as a result, it resigns itself to repeated call-backs to its predecessor. Audiences who haven't seen Finding Nemo will likely struggle to grasp Dory's subtler elements, and the significance of returning characters like Crush (Andrew Stanton) will be entirely lost.

However, fans of the previous film will find Finding Dory to be overly familiar. The film doesn't stray far from the Pixar formula, providing few narrative twists. As a consequence, its emotional power is significantly lessened, even if it's still present. There's a lot of charm in seeing the characters' concern for each other, but the vast majority of emotional scenes are lightweight and built heavily on the plight of characters we know will be alright in the end. Making this worse is the film's lighter thematic palette. The film is sensitive in its depiction of Dory's disability, but that disability rarely connects meaningfully to the plot, which is disappointing after Inside Out and even Zootopia focused so much on subtext.

However, the film does possess some admirable positive messages, specifically about living with disability and about acceptance. Dory's short-term memory loss is the most significant with regards to character dynamics, especially with Marlin and Nemo, who spend a chunk of the film regretting insensitive things said by the former. In this way, the film subtly encourages acceptance through role models. Meanwhile, Dory's journey boasts a simple message of encouragement to people living with disabilities, while also demonstrating an example of someone using a technique to compensate for their disability through Dory's parents laying down seashells for her follow back home.

Even if its emotional punch is relatively weak, Finding Dory is not lacking in charm. It moves briskly, its characters remain likeable, there's numerous very funny scenes, and it looks gorgeous as always. Among the delightful new characters are a nearsighted beluga whale named Destiny, a grumpy octopus named Hank, and a group of goofy comic relief sea lions. The film is briskly paced and entertaining from start to finish, even in the rare instance that a joke doesn't land, and that is perhaps its greatest asset, as the plot is ultimately forgettable.

Preceding the main feature is a short called Piper, a charming if modest and slightly cloying little short about a young bird learning to hunt in the ocean waves. Visually, Piper is much more photorealistic than Dory, but thematically it's much lesser, lacking the minor melancholy which ultimately grounds the longer film. It's a cute, lightweight short which is sometimes a little manipulative, but its visual splendour and charm keep it afloat.

Finding Dory, meanwhile, is kept afloat by much more, even if it's still B-grade Pixar. As a sequel, the film successfully justifies its existence with funny setpieces, charming characters, and worthy themes, but its adherence to formula and haphazardly brisk pacing detracts from the film's emotional core, and it never fully manages to step out of its predecessor's shadow, especially when it's directly coasting off of the world and characters that Finding Nemo set up. It's light and fun and even has strong themes if you dig deep enough, and yet as a whole it feels inconsequential even in spite of its delights. By all accounts, Dory is still a step up from many of the studio's recent efforts, but Inside Out is feeling more and more like a fluke as time goes on.

Finding Dory:
7/10

Piper: 
6/10

Support me on Patreon!

Thank you to my Patreon sponsors:

Todd Throndson