Fun, Heartwarming But Lacking Realism

Rating: 8/10 (13 July 2016)

Simply adorable. Everyone's favorite blue tang fish is back in this sequel all about her. Finding Dory is all about Dory and where she came from and how she came to meet up with Marlin and Nemo. Going back to Dory's origins, the audience gets to see Dory as the cutest animated baby in the world. I mean let's just give the animators here a round of applause for getting some of the smallest details correct, mirroring real fish and lighting and the like, perfectly, but also they created one of the cutest little fish in the world that completely fits with the character. Dory is great, and this film highlights everything about her that makes her so great. She kind, she's loving, she's generous, and she never lets anything keep her down. Dory is a strong character who has never ending hoping and optimism. She's carefree much like Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen was perfect for the first movie, and she was perfect here too, she gets the characters, she knows which emotions to bring to life to the character with perfection. I cannot stress enough how heartwarming that was, to see Dory back on the screen on an adventure to find her home and her family.
Probably the biggest problem — yes, while the acting was perfect, the story was not — of the film is the over-the-top story. Finding Nemo took the audience on an adventure through the ocean. It was very much an adventure. Here, the audience is taking a trip to an aquarium. There is no sense of adventure here. It's fun, it's heartwarming, but the adventure, that sort of tension, it's massively diminished once they are out of the ocean. Then there is the realism of the film. You would think that going to an aquarium would be realistic. Unfortunately not. Once again, Finding Nemo was more realistic. It almost seems as though the writers were trying to balance out the lack of adventure with fun, outlandish antics, but that only resulted in the film being unrealistic. You've got a septapus driving around the Aquarium, a whale shark and beluga escape the aquarium, and much more somewhat ridiculous things are going on in the movie. Is it fun to watch? Totally, kids will love it, but the realism is gone, and that detracts from the overall potential of the film.
There is so much heart in the movie, even scenes that will make the audience cry and it's a film about family, so it's great. But, if you ask me, Finding Nemo is still better.