 |
| Baby Dory in "Finding Dory" |
I can't write about the new Pixar animated feature "Finding Dory" without mentioning my undying affection for "Finding Nemo", its predecessor from 13 years ago. I still remember sitting in the theater in 2003. I noticed my classmates around me giggling with their dates as we waited for it to begin. My date was my Mom. It was the summer I was transitioning from middle to high school and for some reason I clung to this movie. It transported me. The great critic Roger Ebert wrote of the film that he "wanted to sit in the front row and let the images wash out to the edges of my field of vision." I always remembered that quote, because for me, "Finding Nemo" did just that. Watching it again just recently it remains kind of perfect. "Finding Dory" is just as technically beautiful, and even the short film that plays before it, "Piper", is possibly even more remarkable, but it didn't move me as "Nemo" did, even though the story is one in the same. As in "Nemo", a fish gets lost. Only this time around it's Dory, the wide-eyed Blue Tang who suffers from short term memory loss. In the first film, her plight was a joke, in "Finding Dory" though, it's a real problem, as it would be in life. Dory is one my favorite character's from any animated movie, as I assume she was for most people. Ellen Degeneres voices her with just the right amount of daffiness and sensitivity. As a side character she was just right, a perfect foil for Albert Brooks' Marlin, the over-protective and eager father of Nemo. "Nemo" balanced an epic journey, Marlin and Dory's mission to find Nemo, with a comic chamber piece set in a fish tank, with a kaleidoscope of quirky characters. The movement back and forth between the two stories was seamless. In "Finding Dory" the seams show. It moves quick, too quick. We begin in Australia and within a blink, we're on the West Coast of the U.S. The geography struggles to make sense. It's manic pace mirrors the personality of our heroine Dory, who we always root for, but never know how much to latch on. Dory is brilliant as a sidekick, a harmless doof, yet as the central focus, her frantic search for her family leads the movie to emotional but unsatisfying conclusions. Despite these lapses in storytelling, "Finding Dory" is precious and has a couple moments near the end that reach new heights s in Pixar's tear jerking machine. A new character voiced by Ed O'Neill is a wonder of animated achievement, a camouflaging octopus with seven tentacles, who helps and antagonizes Dory along her journey. Some other minor characters steal some of the spotlight: a couple bullying sea lions, two goofy whales, and even a few throwback characters from "Finding Nemo" get some attention. "Finding Dory" is hard to criticize, mainly because I don't want to criticize it. But beyond those minor issues, I both laughed out loud and cried real tears and I thought about my awkward and anxious 14 year old self in the theater all those years ago, and how I allowed the images of the animated ocean to take me somewhere far from where I was. It's what only the best and most long lasting movies do.
