Pixar's Fish Still Got It

Rating: 8/10 (22 June 2016)

Finding Dory is the 2016 sequel to the beloved Pixar film Finding Nemo. In this movie, the lovable Dory, a blue tang fish with short term memory loss voiced by Ellen Degeneres, starts to get fragments of memories about her long lost parents and sets out on a quest to find them. She is joined by Marlin and Nemo (Albert Brooks and Hayden Rolence) as they travel to California. There, Dory goes to a Marine Life Rehabilitation Center and meets Hank (Ed O'Neil) a Septopus and Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) a whale shark with farsightedness who help her navigate the facility. This movie, as with all Pixar films, had a lot of heart. The story felt important. The stakes felt high. It didn't pander to kids. There was no real enemy or bad guy. This was an isolated story about what a home and a family really means. Baby Dory is adorable. And adult Dory is sweet, and sad. Anyone watching can feel her emotions. You understand her pain, and her insecurities. The animation, as always, is gorgeous. So much detail. The Ocean feels like it's there. It feels alive. There's so much to take in, and you can tell the animators really put in a lot of love to make this. The voice acting and scripting is top notch. The words and the characters give an almost perfect balance of comedy and drama. The emotions are genuine. The plot points are put together quite well. This movie is not as emotional as Finding Nemo. The stakes are nowhere near as high. However, it is still a quality film that is worth seeing, and felt as if it had a place in the Pixar world, and the Nemo lore. I'd say it was about as good as the Original Film. And would give it a solid 8/10. Go See It.