Procurando Dory

Everyone's favourite forgetful fish, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), is back on the big screen a whopping 13 years after joining Marlin (Albert Brooks) on a quest to find his missing clownfish son. This time, however, Dory takes centre stage. Shifting the focus from Nemo to Dory for this belated follow-up is a no-brainer; it allows Pixar to concoct a new ocean-spanning adventure without feeling too repetitive, whilst cleverly bringing the broader plot full-circle by having the child now looking for the parents. Even with the huge gap between movies, there are still obstacles to be circumvented in order to avoid sequelitis. Most of these are handled with the intelligence and elegance we have come to expect from Pixar, though some hurdles prove to be too big. The story goes to very different places from both a narrative and location perspective, but the messages behind the film – don't judge a book by its cover, spontaneity can be liberating, you can do anything if you try hard enough, etc – are all too familiar. With glorious cutting-edge animation, a string of creative sequences and a barrel-full of laughs, there won't be a single audience member, regardless of age, that'll be bored; yet there's also a lack of truly memorable moments that stop this from being a classic like its predecessor. It goes without saying that Dory is the star of the show, although the range of hilarious supporting characters is impressive. Ed O'Neill's cantankerous, camouflaging octopus Hank and Ty Burrell's self-doubting beluga whale Bailey shine brightest. It might not be in the top echelon of Pixar outings, but Finding Dory is a charming, amusing and thoughtful family flick worth visiting the cinema for.

Back to the pond for Pixar, where we find things largely unchanged from the end of 2003's Finding Nemo. As the continually-forgetful blue tang Dory has a sudden enduring flash of her childhood, a rush of recall, she gathers the clownfish for one more globe-spanning adventure. The setup is a little soft, lingering too long in the shadow of the first film, but eventually we break free of that sentiment and forge a new (if similar) identity for the sequel. The closed-in landscape of an aquatic themed zoo/amusement park feels a bit claustrophobic at first glance, but as hijinx ensue and we learn more of Dory's early years, it all fleshes out nicely. No shortage of colorful new characters there, literally and figuratively, not the least of which is Ed O'Neill's escape artist "septipus" (having lost a tentacle in the touch tank), who treads dangerously close to becoming a deus ex machina with his versatility. O'Neill brings his usual disgruntled pessimism to the role, though, and some genuinely clever sight gags using the creature's natural assets go a long way to smoothing that over. He's overly convenient, but we're always glad to see him again. Witty and fast-paced, with a good mix of gags for the adults and their kids, plus a potent dose of the studio's famed poignancy. I laughed, I misted up, but I never quite fooled myself into thinking it was superior to the first.

The story was beautifully executed, it was well paced, the new characters kept the story fresh and the film was somewhat educational. Perhaps not as emotionally charged as the first, but not many sequels can achieve such a high quality level in terms of depth in all its characters and minor details. Only Pixar can make you feel empathetic towards a fish.

The continuations in the Pixar universe have always generated reflections and debates about the creative power of the studio. On the one hand, sequences such as Toy Story 2 (1999) and Toy Story 3 (2010) are praised almost unanimously for maintaining the excellence of the original, on the other, Monsters University (2013) and, mainly, Cars 2 (2011) are seen by many as oscillating points in the production company's acclaimed filmography. For these reasons, and also for the thirteen years between productions, Finding Dory, continuation of the absolute success Finding Nemo (2003), arrives wrapped in a colossal expectation.

Now in Finding Dory, she takes center stage for her own story, where this specialty is converted from humor to drama, and the immensity of the ocean is reduced to an oceanarium (more controlled environment) to be proportional to the difficulty of the character's mission. She can remember nothing, but she has flashes of memories with her parents, and now that she knows, she needs to find them. In this sequence of the epoch-making feature, the spectator has the feeling that he is missing the loved ones, such as the goldfish Dory, who is now the main protagonist of the story. Thus, the work is an incredible work of nostalgia, which fills its audience with grace just because it reminds them of such a remarkable universe.

Director Andrew Stanton returns, this time alongside Angus MacLane, to lead the plot that takes place a year after the events of the first film. Here the little blue fish Dory, who suffers from a recent memory loss problem, begins to gain insights with fragments of memories of her past alongside her parents. With some clues and a lot of disposition, she sets out on a journey to meet her family again, with the clown fish Marlin and her son Nemo as a company. Along the way, Dory gets lost from his friends, ending up at the California Marine Life Institute. The situation of the previous film is reversed, and now the duo Nemo and Marlin are leaving in search of their demoralized companion.

Right in the opening scene, the feature opens up its emotional bias, featuring Dory's first flashback. The design of the young version of the character - with his kind and gigantic eyes - receiving the affection of his parents is the first letter presented by Stanton and MacLane to win over the audience and becomes the joker of the filmmakers, as it is repeated several times throughout the narrative. The repetition, incidentally, is one of the keywords of Finding Dory. Something that makes sense due to the protagonist's condition in relation to her memory, but that also ends up serving as an acceptable pretext for the script to revisit a good part of the elements that contributed to Finding Nemo's success.

The new feature bets heavily on the affective memory of the audience and their pleasure in recognizing what is familiar to them, such as the riddle of location / address that serves as a guide for searches in films (formerly "P. Sherman 42, Wallaby Way, Sydney", Now "The Jewel of Monterey, California"). The sequel also strives to make ingenious connections with Dory's past and reveal the origin of some of his trademarks: knowledge in "whale" and the motto "Keep swimming, keep swimming", for example. Some supporting characters also return in small appearances, such as Uncle Stingray and Crush, the surfing turtle. Beside these well-known figures we have a series of new characters, many serving as comic reliefs, such as the trio of sea lions and the mad bird Becky.

Others are more important, such as the dubious Hank octopus, the whale shark with vision problems Destiny and the beluga whale Bailey. Although everyone has their dramatic roles in the story, especially Hank, these characters serve much more as tools to facilitate the actions of the protagonists. The filmmakers seek to explore the real biological peculiarities of animals - the mobility and camouflage capacity of octopuses, the echolocation of belugas 'sonar' - transforming them almost into superpowers, which work well in the busiest scenes, including a grand road chase. But, even though it is an interesting idea and inserted in a fanciful context, its exaggeration often ends up sounding like a simple crutch to sustain the weaknesses of the script.

The narrative structure adopted by Stanton and his team, despite being linear, fits flashbacks from Dory's childhood that are triggered by events in the present. Thus, the protagonist's disability and how she deals with her condition end up playing a fundamental role in the progress of the story, in a great view of the filmmakers. Although the central theme of the work is "the family", the main lesson here is how to deal with your own limitations. It is not for nothing that a good part of the new characters, like the grouchy octopus Hank (Ed O'Neill), the whale shark Destiny (Kaitlin Olson) or the beluga whale Bailey (Ty Burrell) have physical problems that need to be overcome in the course of of the adventure. The message of resilience is placed in an organic way inside the tape, which never loses sight of the main objective of the protagonist - something quite ironic, considering Dory's peculiar condition.

The film makes it very clear throughout the narrative that Dory is unable to do anything because of his short memory. She may find it more difficult to perform some tasks that are simple for other people, but she is much more than a forgotten fish. The impulsiveness, positivity and ability to find solutions in complicated situations of the character work so well that at certain times we can even say that she forgot that that was an impossible task. That's what made her find Nemo together with Marlin and that's what is highlighted in Finding Dory.

All this dramatic part is worked in a subtextual way, with the film never neglecting the good agile and accurate gags and jokes that marked the first film. Not that the script is perfect. Some of the subplots are quite predictable and the script suffers trying to find a role for Marlin and Nemo. However, every time the film focuses on the title character, all of that is left out. Dory remains adorable and charismatic, with an almost unshakable optimism and the contrast of his cheerful personality, not only with Hank's traumatic grumpy - who ends up being his main partner for much of the feature - but with his own loss past, makes her a really interesting heroine.

Looking for Dory is exactly about longing and this need to find those who make us feel at home, regardless of what happened in the past or how long it has been since we last met. Thus, Finding Dory provides a simple feeling in its viewer, uniting in an exemplary way the feelings of his audience with those of the characters on the scene, a film that comes to be very enchanting because of that. And if Finding Dory expands the universe seen in Nemo, Stanton and his team still demonstrate an enormous creative capacity, both in putting their range of characters in unusual situations, such as the hand pool that is filmed as if it were a natural catastrophe - but in In fact, it is a tank in which the children of the institute can interact with animals - but also in the creation and continuation of their visual identity, often creating sequences with an aesthetic precision that will fill the eyes of any film buff. One is the moment when Nemo, Marlin and Dory are chased by a giant squid; the visual construction of the suspense scene is incredible, showing that Pixar's excellent films go beyond great scripts.

As it could not be otherwise, the visual part of the production is impeccable. It is not difficult to recognize the aesthetic richness achieved by the work of the Pixar team: the characters are expressive without having to be excessively anthropomorphized; Marine Institute always brings a pleasant surprise to each new environment; the color palette is rich and intense (it is a pleasure to see how, for example, Dory, Marlin and Nemo change colors appropriately depending on the light - or lack of - that is seen in each place); and the quality of the animation is what we might expect from the studio (note, for example, how the movements of Dory's fins look like anxious beats on the head as she struggles to remember something). More efficient is also the montage: If in Finding Nemo the narrative sounded episodic, relying excessively on fades to jump from one character to another, here these transitions are made in a much more fluid (pardon the pun) and organic way. On the other hand, the excessive reliance on the convenient flashbacks that bring back the heroine's memories when they are most needed is a little disappointing. To top it off, if the animals' actions were relatively plausible in the first feature, however extreme they may be, here the script abandons any attempt to solve the problems with the minimum of verisimilitude - and the climax of the projection, in particular, is too absurd, no fitting the logic established in Nemo.

The essence of Pixar's formula is the balance between humor and emotion, and the film manages to achieve it satisfactorily. There are some inspired jokes and puns, the graphic quality of the animation fills the eyes and the drama of loss and the importance of the family has an undeniable appeal. What is missing for Finding Dory is the spark of genius that makes the masterpieces of the studio manage to escape precisely from the facilities previously exposed. Some moments of animation approach this level, such as the emotional climax of Dory or the great sequence in the aquarium of the children's wing of the marine park. But even these scenes do not dazzle the opening minutes of Up (2009) or the culinary critic's scene in Ratatouille (2007), just to mention two examples. Anyway, this probably won't hinder Find Dory's success, because the audience's affection for the universe of Nemo, Marlin and Dory makes them enter the field with the game already won.

Right from the start I could easily tell why Finding Dory isn't the most appreciated. It wasn't as brilliantly written as Finding Nemo was and in the opening, it immediately showed your throat with the main plot about Dory's parents and all.

I must admit it wasn't a bad film at all. It definitely had a ton of great things going on, it was still enjoyable and I liked some of the new characters introduced. Look if this was a standalone film or if Finding Nemo was around the same quality, my review would have been normal but I just have to compare it with the superior original

What happened with the insanely brilliant ways the first was written in? Don't get me wrong, Finding Dory still had some clever ways to get the plot going but it definitely didn't have the Pixar magic for me, I never laughed during this film. One thing to add that severely affected my experience was Dory's short-term memory loss. I know people with it suffer like she does but Dory just experiences it way too many times, in Finding Nemo it was alright because they had some comedy in them plus it was mainly focused on Marlin and Nemo. But as I said I didn't find it funny so each time she would experience her short-term memory loss, I would get frustrated because it genuinely gets on my nerves. If the writers didn't show it into your face that Dory has it, I would have been in a completely different mood

But as I said Finding Dory is still good film, it was entertaining, fun and overall a fun experience but it was lacking

Rating: 7.0/10.