Just as good as the first one

Rating: Null/10 (17 April 2017)

Pixar has this habit of telling the exact same story with their sequels, yet doing it in such a way that it doesn't bother us. This is a usual sequel problem where the story is the exact same and nothing has changed. And perhaps that's the trick. Because things do change in Pixar movies, yet the characters end up in the same kind of situations despite having grown as people.
Take Finding Dory, for instance. The characters we know and love have evolved. Marlin has relaxed a little bit due to the events of the first film, Nemo has matured and Dory has finally found an anchor point for herself. Yet, as you might surmise from the title, Dory ends up lost and this time it's up to Marlin and Nemo to look for her.
And it works. It really works. In my mind this is very much on par with the original film. If I was forced to choose, I'd pick the original, but that's solely to the novelty of it, and in this case that counts only as a tiebreaker. The animation quality is still superb, the returning characters feel the same, the story is just as exciting as before, the ocean is still a great place to have an adventure, the new characters are all interesting and it just feels familiar.
Is it among my favourite Pixar films? Not really, but that's like saying that you prefer chocolate ice cream over strawberry one. Both are amazing, but the one is just more to your liking. I honestly do think that both this and Finding Nemo don't necessarily need the big action endings they both have, and I'm not a huge fan of Marlin nor Nemo. This film has a bigger action ending, but on the other hand Dory's emotional struggle with her memory loss is some of the best drama Pixar has ever done, so it evens out. And even this is me really nitpicking.
It's a good film from Pixar. Definitely worth a shot if you liked the original.