Why supporting characters are supporting characters

Rating: 4/10 (21 February 2017)

As we learned from Cars 2, bringing a supporting cast member - in that case, Mater - to lead a sequel often essentially makes the side the entree. Watching 2 hours - and wow, is this thing too long - of Dory doing cutesy stuff and forgetting stuff becomes grindingly tedious. The miracle of "Finding Nemo" grew out of the animators finding a way for small fish, who are essentially prisoners of the vast and largely featureless water, to have often land-based adventures without unduly straining credulity. "Finding Dory" lacks the inventiveness when it comes to working around the limitations of the aquatic by employing an octopus who luckily doesn't need to be kept wet, who breathes are, can drive a truck, can match any background he squishes against, and who happens to have fine motor skills. Sure real octopi can open a jar to get a fish out but riding a stroller like a wheelchair comes across as a wincey bit unrealistic. The underwater seascapes drawn by the animators are amazingly realistic and if you just turn down the sound of the humorless and dull dialog, the movie is on whole beautiful to look at. There's just too much of it to look at with a runtime that features way too much swimming of small fish through pipes or underwater paths or sunken freighters. In short, Pixar needed to spend more resources on the script and less on the animation.