It goes straight for the heart

Rating: 10/10 (16 June 2016)

How do you top a masterpiece like "Finding Nemo" which by the way won Oscar for best animated feature of the year more than a decade ago? How do you follow after that is exactly the million dollar question with FINDING DORY and although this sequel doesn't reach the same level of greatness, it holds its own just fine. Pixar's eternal reliance on a well-told story is why FINDING DORY goes straight for the heart.
All is well from the events in "Finding Nemo," every character seems happy doing their usual routine. Until something triggers Dory's (Ellen DeGeneres) memory which is quite rare since as you all know, and as she keeps reminding us, she suffers from short term memory loss. She remembers she had a mom and a dad. With the help of Nemo (Hayden Rolence) and Marlin (Albert Brooks) the trio once again go off on another adventure to find Dory's parents. But of course, they don't have a solid plan and they only rely on Dory's bits and pieces of memory to guide them, so this across the ocean adventure leads them to California's Marine Life Institute where Dory finds help in an octopus named Hank (Ed O'Neill) a beluga (Ty Burrell) and a whale shark (Kaitlin Olson) If "Finding Nemo" has part of its story set in the ocean and the other set in a small aquarium tank in a dentist office, FINDING DORY is partly set in the ocean but mostly set out of the water, on land and in a giant rehabilitation aquarium center kinda like the one up at Monterey Bay. So the scope this time around is a lot bigger, and I'm sure that presents its own set of challenges for director Andrew Stanton and his fellow animators. But luckily the film doesn't suffer from what usually befalls other sequels which is the difficulty of recapturing that magic once it's already out of the bottle, thankfully that doesn't happen here because FINDING DORY doesn't worry too much about giving winks and nods to the first film, it can stand on its own, and aside from Marlin, Dory, and Nemo, the film also features a ton of new characters that play into a whole new round of camaraderie.
Does it matter for Dory to remember and find her parents? In other words, is this sequel necessary? Perhaps, and perhaps not. The first movie already ended with happily-ever-after anyway and that's what it seems to be happening at the beginning of FINDING DORY as well, but going back home and reuniting with your loved ones have always been the reason why this franchise is dearly loved by many. And another thing that stands out is that not one, not two, but more than a few of the new characters in this film have shortcomings or flaws. The beluga doesn't think his sonar skills could work, the whale shark is nearsighted, the octopus only has seven tentacles, and even a certain bird helping Marlin and Nemo is a bit unstable. But that's the beauty of FINDING DORY because it showcases the strengths from the characters that others would quickly dismiss or not deem as normal. Dory, who suffers from memory loss, is at home in this film surrounded by characters who feel for and understand exactly what she's going through in terms of their flaws. And I think that's a great lesson for children everywhere to not look for perfection but to do the best they can with what they've been given. FINDING DORY may not be the masterpiece that "Finding Nemo" was, and the third act may seem a bit too outrageous for some, but overall it's still a funny, heartwarming, and exciting adventure movie that the entire family can enjoy.
-- Rama's Screen --