Another great Pixar film, but the original is still the best

Rating: 7/10 (18 June 2016)

With John Lasseter at the helm, it's hard for Pixar to make a bad movie. But some are better than others and resonate more with the viewers. All of them are entertaining, and the best bring a fresh perspective on what it means to be human. Finding Nemo was (and still is) a brilliant piece of art, not only one of the greatest animations of all time, but one of the greatest movies, period. The core of Finding Nemo was a parent having to finally let go of his child so that the child could grow, something every parent could understand and every child could relate to. I'm hard-pressed to say exactly what Finding Dory is about, though. Some reviewers have said it's about dealing with disabilities. Some have said that it's about family. And there are certainly moments where that's true. But I never got a sense of a strong theme that carried through the entire movie and gave the coherence that Finding Nemo had.
There are many exciting showpiece moments, the requisite chase scenes and threatening creatures. There are lots of comic relief moments. But throughout the movie I kept thinking that I had seen it all before (ironic considering Dory can't remember one moment to the next). Many scenes so closely echoed the original that occasionally I wondered if Pixar had simply copy-and- pasted them from the original and then changed a few characters and scenery pieces.
Even though I know talking fish with front-facing eyes is a hard premise to swallow, I could accept that. In Finding Nemo, I never once questioned many of the improbable things that happened (like the dentist office escape), because the story made it all seem possible. But in Finding Dory. too many of the scenes seemed so impossible -- even in the context of an animation -- that I simply couldn't accept them. Instead, those moments came across as convenient plot devices when the writers had backed themselves into a corner.
I did like how Andrew Stanton was able to connect certain elements from the original in a way that formed a deeper backstory about Dory. But I never found myself connecting with the characters the way I did in the original. I read an article about how the movie's creators wanted to make the film have a heart. Well it does have that, but I think it needed a stronger spine.