June 2016
When Dory, the amnesiac /æmˈniːziæk/ blue tang at the heart of Pixar's latest movie, has a flash of her own past, the camera locks in on her fishy face as the world spins around it, becoming a blur that resolves into a familiar tableau. That's what it's like watching Finding Dory, which moves fast enough to give us the illusion that we're getting somewhere, but finally drops us right back where we started.
We cry because this is where were supposed to
Perhaps that's only fair, since going home is what Finding Dory is about. In 2003's Finding Nemo, Dory's short-term memory impairment /ɪmˈpeəmənt/ was a running gag : "It runs in my family at least I think it does." But the sequel shifts to Dory's point of view, and from that vantage , , , it's terrifying. The movie opens with a scene from Dory's childhood, as her parents cheerily struggle to find a way for their special-needs child to exist in the world. "What if I forget you? Dory asks them. "Would you ever forget me?"
Returning writer-director Andrew Stanton, who shares screenplay credit with Victoria Strouse and Bob Peterson, wastes no time lunging , /lʌndʒ/ for the tear ducts , and his aim is true. But that tendency to assert emotional impact rather than earning it is a good illustration of Pixar's conundrum /kəˈnʌndrəm/ , : the more successful their movies become, the greater the imperative , to repeat them, and the more they repeat them, the more they become routine. We cry not because the movie has tapped into , our deepest hopes and fears, but because this is the part where we're supposed to.
Finding Dory both inverts and retraces the original film. This time, Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) is the protagonist, clownfish Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolance) the supporting cast, and instead of a parent searching for his son, Dory focuses on a daughter searching for her parents. Instead of into the open ocean, this quest leads us into the controlled environment of the fictional Marine Life Institute, a coastal Californian preserve where injured aquatic /əˈkwætɪk/ , creatures are rehabilitated and returned to the wild, and Sigourney Weaver's calming voice booms periodically from loudspeakers. (The setting was reportedly shifted from a more conventional aquarium after Pixar's writers watched the documentary Blackfish.) Where Nemo's perils , were physical, Dory's are also psychological: in addition to leaping between tanks and dodging the thrusting fingers of children in a "please touch" pool, Dory has to navigate the featureless terrain /təˈreɪn/ of her own mind, a space even vaster and more intimidating than the ocean itself.
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Waterlogged
Pixar's story factory excels at writing to theme, but in Finding Dory, the parts don't always seem to match up . The movie is a grab bag , of incidents, with Dory navigating a series of obstacles and picking up new pals along the way, including an agoraphobic octopus named Hank (Ed O'Neill), a near-sighted whale shark (Kaitlyn Olson), and a beluga whale (Ty Burrell) who's lost confidence in his echolocation skills. But the moment Hank scoops Dory out of a tank with a coffee carafe /kəˈræf/ and starts squiring her around the aquarium's hallways, the movie feels like it's lost its grip on reality , , even of the animated talking-fish variety. Later, the octopus drives a truck.
Finding Dory sticks to the shallow end of the pool
What made Finding Nemo great is that it's both a children's movie about parenting and an adult movie about childhood. It played off the almost unbearable fear of separation, and though it was structured as a lighthearted adventure, you never forgot that with a tweak of the dial , it could have turned into pure tragedy. (In an alternate universe, Marlin watches his wife and children get murdered and becomes a vigilante crimefighter , .) Finding Dory, to indulge the inevitable aquatic metaphor, sticks to the shallow end of the pool , splashing about frantically , but never getting its hair wet.
One advantage of all that treading water is the opportunity to admire the view. More than 20 years after Pixar's Toy Story, vanishingly few computer-animated films can make a claim to being beautiful, but Finding Dory is one of them. Its underwater world is infused with shimmering light, and the Marine Life Institute's curved glass , throw criss-cross , shadows across the tank floors. It also features Pixar's most intensive and thoughtful use of 3D, which enhances the vertiginous /vɜːˈtɪdʒɪnəs/ swirl of Dory's flashbacks and the vastness of the empty ocean. Even better is Piper, the short film that proceeds it, the wordless story of a downy chick learning to make its own way in the world. You could stare at Dory's reflections for hours, or lose yourself in the soft texture of Piper's sea-flecked , feathers.
Losing yourself in Finding Dory's story, well, that's another kettle of fish . DeGeneres, so brilliant as the first film's comic relief , struggles to hit the dramatic notes , that Dory's lead status requires, and the movie does, too. Sequels don't have to be retreads /ˈriːtred/ : Pixar's own Toy Story 2 expanded and enriched its predecessor's world. Dory works its way up to an image of genuine emotional weight, but it also makes much of what's come before seem like merely killing time. Dory's catchphrase is "Just keep swimming," but the movie feels like it's just paddling in circles .
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