Finding Dory (2016)

[baumer]

Do your thing

[Dementeleus]

It's entertaining but it feels like a sequel. Feels like it should've just been Dory's story -- Nemo and Marlin feel ancillary to the story and I felt it dragged whenever they cut back to their adventures. The real standout is Hank, and I would've happily watched an entire movie featuring just him and Dory. 

 

B

[Ezen Baklattan]

I enjoyed it well enough. It doesn't try to tie itself to closely to the premise of Finding Nemo, and some of the emotional beats hit really well (particularly in the first 10 minutes), but other than that, it never really rises beyond very good, but sometimes great. The offbeat charm of the humor, especially with the sea lions and Hank probably are what works best in the movie, besides Dory's own arc. Nemo feels like he could have gained more development, but Marlin neared Arlo-levels of annoying whining throughout the film. 

 

I also feel like they didn't quite had enough material for the film; the film kind of spins its wheels in the second act, besides giving us fun character moments. (There are three instances where it seems like Dory is genuinely about to meet her parents; I know you gotta build dramatic tension, but still) Build up Dory's story (and Nemo's to a lesser extent) further and you could have had something even stronger.

 

As it stands, considering how this wasn't really a sequel much of us asked for, it's a solid result. And it gave us another kick-ass Thomas Newman score, so there's that.

[MinaTakla]

B grade for me. 7/10

Some parts of the movie gave me a headache and were a bit annoying. 

Other parts were touching and wonderful.

I still think it's an unneccessary sequel but a well made one.

[AniNate]

First off I want to say how impressed I was with Pixar's ability to wring as much visual beauty out of a man - made institute as possible. It's all really big and overwhelming and despite some quibbles you could make with the script's logic they still succeed in making you feel the tall order it is for Dory to find her parents. 

 

It's not as funny or as energetically paced as Nemo was but in my opinion that's okay because this was clearly intended as a much more introspective narrative. And you best damn believe the waterworks came when Dory finally does find her parents again. I also loved how the main theme was tied to all of the supporting characters as well, with all of it being supported by another excellent Thomas Newman score. A worthy sequel that very much justifies its existence,  imo. 

[The Panda]

I really liked this movie, especially after giving it time to process.  It covers the theme of disabilities brilliantly, and how they don't really make somebody less of a someone. Dory's own arc is very heartfelt, and it hits you hard at an emotional level in a different way than Finding Nemo.

 

The visuals of the movie are gorgeous, and it manages to entertain you the whole way through.  There were great new side characters and funny moments, it obviously plays different than Nemo with it feeling much more contained, but in a way that's a good thing.  We didn't need to see Dory adventuring across the entire Ocean again,  because this movie was less about that and more personal and introspective.

 

I also love how they played the fact that Marlin was just as forgetful as Dory in a different way (with him misremembering random details that happened), so in a way playing with the fact that while Dory may have had a more "pronounced disability", none of the characters were actually free of disabilities.  

 

Thomas Newman's score is again brilliantly beautiful and captures the mood and tone of the film.  Probably the most memorable score of the year so far.

 

Finding Dory is a great companion piece to go along Finding Nemo.  I don't know if we really need another movie in this world, but then again I thought the same after Nemo and this was a pleasant surprise.  It isn't as magical as Finding Nemo, but it's still one very effective sequel.  

 

Finding Dory is way better than it ever should have been.  If Inside Out, Nemo, and Wall-E are platinum tier Pixar, this is gold.

 

A-

[Webslinger]

Finding Dory occupies a difficult space in Pixar's filmography. As one of the company's few sequels to date, it faces the incredibly difficult challenge of trying to measure up not only to the general quality of much of the studio's illustrious filmography (an especially daunting task considering that one of last year's offerings, Inside Out, was my favorite film of its year), but also a predecessor that ingrained itself deeply into the public's pop culture consciousness and cemented the studio's legacy as a group of filmmakers who could strike gold no matter how strange the concept. While the film ultimately falls well short of its predecessor and ranks in the lower tier of Pixar's output - about on par with the likes of Brave and Monsters University - it's still an appreciably heartfelt and consistently entertaining film in its own right. The film is at its best when it turns its attention toward its title character. Ellen DeGeneres is still a perfect fit as Dory, with a sense of comedic timing that makes the character every bit as entertaining as she was the first time out. The film also gets a ton of mileage out of the relationship that develops between Dory and Ed O'Neill's octopus, Hank. Truthfully, if the filmmakers had focused more intensely upon the relationship between Dory and Hank (whose arc feels too simplistic within the screen time he's given), it might have been an even more satisfying film; as is, the third act still delivers a potent emotional punch thanks to the development of Dory and Hank and the integration of the plot threads surrounding the whales and Dory's parents. Unfortunately, if there's any glaring problem with this incredibly affable film, it's the integration of the first film's protagonist and its title character. Despite solid voice work from Albert Brooks, Marlin feels unnecessary to the narrative and lacks the nuance that made his character arc so powerful in the first film; likewise, Nemo could be removed from the film entirely and not affect anything beyond voicing viewers' thoughts on Marlin's jerky behavior toward Dory in the first act. Admittedly, Finding Dory was always at a creative disadvantage as a long-delayed sequel to a beloved hit whose narrative did not demand a sequel; taking that point into consideration, the finished film feels like a victory of effective humor and well-executed emotional appeals, which is more than can be said of the average sequel.

 

B+

Edited June 18, 2016 by Webslinger

[Ritchie Blackmore]

Meh. Funny in some parts but overall it was an ok movie. B-/C+ 

[Gopher]

+1 to Webslinger's comment that it occupies a difficult place in the Pixar canon. I think comparison to the other films is tough because Dory has something very different on its mind. Not worse, but different. It feels like the creative team was very aware that they were never going to topple Nemo's place in the critical or cultural lore, and whatever sequel they made would have to have a smaller scope and have to feel vital or necessary in an unexpected way. They accomplished both - the film is wildly paced, jumping from a character to the next action setpiece to the next new character like it's nothing. Under the surface it gets to something scary and necessary about family and disability, frequently using first-person animation to create a visceral experience Pixar hasn't tried before. A great film would've given more time for either side to breathe, but a very good one like Dory puts a confident foot forward and loudly (particularly when an octopus is driving a truck) pronounces what it wants to be. 

[cannastop]

I give this movie an A.

 

I actually liked this more than the original Finding Nemo. I feel a lot more sympathy for Dory than Nemo, for one thing. And it even brought tears to my eyes, which is more than I can say about the original.

 

I really didn't like the overblown climax, though. Just get back in the fucking ocean already! And who gives a shit if Hank goes to Cleveland?

[Ezen Baklattan]

I mentioned earlier that the film feels a bit padded, but I'm now thinking a lot of the padding actually works. Pretty much all of the new characters have really solid footing - having to jump around a good deal between each one, and they provide a relief to the more somber story at play. It's clear that the writers and actors had a lot of fun with the roles, and they're hardly reliant on reusing comic characters (among many other things) from the first film. The film really tries to form its own identity, something Pixar's getting a lot better at with their sequels.

 

I know it's hip to hate on sequels, but this has me a lot more curious as to what will happen in The Incredibles 2 and even Toy Story 4. 

[The Panda]

7 hours ago, cannastop said:

I give this movie an A.

 

I actually liked this more than the original Finding Nemo. I feel a lot more sympathy for Dory than Nemo, for one thing. And it even brought tears to my eyes, which is more than I can say about the original.

 

I really didn't like the overblown climax, though. Just get back in the fucking ocean already! And who gives a shit if Hank goes to Cleveland?

 

I cared about Hank going to Cleveland.

[cannastop]

1 minute ago, The Pandaren said:

 

I cared about Hank going to Cleveland.

I didn't get the sense that it would actually be a bad choice for him. Why does Dory all of the sudden have the authority to tell him how he should live his life?

[filmlover]

Finding Nemo is my favorite Pixar movie of them all, so I knew it was going to be a difficult feat for this to live up to it, but this is a very worthy continuation. I guess if there's really a "flaw" that one could find with it, it would be that some of it feels like a rehash of themes we saw in the previous movie, but this gives the comedic Dory character additional layers that serve her well. This is a frequently hilarious, beautiful (the studio's animation has never been better), and lively adventure. Somewhere near the middle of Pixar's canon (which speaks very much of how high-quality their movies are). A-

 

Also, that "Piper" short before the movie is one of their better ones.

[La Binoche]

I liked this better than I expected. It doesn't have the depth or grandeur of Finding Nemo. It lacks Nemo's sense of the characters having gone through an epic journey. But that's fine. It was never going to recapture Nemo's magic, and it wisely doesn't try to. Instead it's more like a fun, fast-paced caper, a jail-break kind of adventure. I liked that the setting is a little different here -- it mostly takes place at an Aquarium instead of the ocean. 

 

Sigourney Weaver's very random, very unexpected "cameo" is the funniest part of the film. 

 

B+/A-

[filmlover]

40 minutes ago, La Binoche said:

Sigourney Weaver's very random, very unexpected "cameo" is the funniest part of the film. 

 

"My friend Sigourney" is gonna become a new catchphrase around the house.

[somebody85]

*sigh* I really thought this one would be better. Finding Dory doesn't come close to matching the excellence of Finding Nemo.

After watching it, I immediately watched Finding Nemo for the first time in years and got way more enjoyment out of that then anything in Dory.

There's not a single aspect that Dory does better then Nemo besides the updated animation (and thanks to this movie mostly being located inside the rescue aquarium it's not as breath taking as Finding Nemo was)

By the trailers I thought this sequel would be a rehash of the original story and I'm happy to say it isn't. It still does feel like a big budget glorified TV special at times but there are strong aspects to the story...until the 3rd act.
 

The Pixar movie this reminded me the most of was actually Toy Story 2. Take away the unique ideas at play with vintage items and the heartbreaking backstory with Jessie and you have the outline of Finding Dory. One of the characters gets taken and the other characters have to go through a human filled location to find them.

Look I get that this is an animated cartoon for kids about talking fish but this movie forces you to check your brain at the door very early on. Unlike Finding Nemo, this story constantly has Dory and crew jumping out of objects of water to get to other objects of water. And a large portion of this story takes place outside of the ocean. There's not a lot of wonder in this movie because of it and that's what fuels the TV special vibes.

In one scene, Marlin and Nemo jump from a bucket of water that was carried by a bird over multiple amusement park fountains to get to another tank. And that's just one of many scenes like it once the gang reaches the rescue aquarium. If that idea makes you roll your eyes, they will go there and get stuck by the finale. 

This movie dropped into low B/high C territory after Dory locates her parents (which was a huge coincidence in itself). I can buy the gang from the Toy Story series doing this kind of stuff. Of course they aren't alive but they don't need water to breathe and have arms and legs. The climax of Dory is completely ridiculous. There are rules that they built within Finding Nemo and Finding Dory throws them out the window and goes full overboard during the breakout and truck chasing sequence.
 

If these rules had been established in Finding Nemo, Marlin would have immediately just jumped on the boat when the diver took Nemo at the beginning. This was so close to bad Dreamworks territory and really brought the movie down a lot for me. I can't even write about most of it because of how stupid it is. 

Again it's an animated cartoon for kids about talking fish who know advanced dental procedures. Still there was nothing even remotely close to what happened in that finale in the original movie. Maybe the tank gang escaping at the end which we barely see? Nemo being able to hold a pebble?

No here we get a whale shooting Dory onto a truck thanks to randomly running into a bunch of otters who decide to stall traffic. I'm sorry, the whole sequence is incredibly dumb. It's bad enough it didn't end right when the otters first stopped the truck. When it gets away a second time and Hank takes the wheel it becomes completely ludicrous. This wasn't like Toy Story 2. Toy Story established this sort of climax. Finding Nemo did not.

I don't get why several good movies have really been brought down by the 3rd act this year. 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Conjuring 2 are just a few that come to mind.

The writers also conveniently use Dorys short term memory loss as a plot device despite how it's displayed during the opening. Sometimes it's severe, other times it's not and other times it's non existent. It's whatever the story needs it to be.

Also this movies entire existence kind of ruins Dorys character from the original. Near the end of Finding Nemo, Dory has a moment where she tells Marlin not to go and that she feels like she can remember better because he is her family (very similar to the one she has here after she thinks her parents are dead). Now thanks to a bunch of random flashbacks, Dory has a new family that has been waiting in that spot for who knows how long. We watched Dory grow up in the beginning so it had to be years. It's a good moment that her parents cared so much about her that they waited but I couldn't feel emotional about this because it felt so shoehorned in.
 

But with all that out of the way, there's a lot here to enjoy. The best stuff in the story does involve Dorys flashbacks with her parents. Those scenes do great work in explaining the struggles of raising a child with disabilities. The new characters (while not as funny or good as the original) are all great and the animation is stunning. Nemo and Marlin mostly get pushed to the side for this adventure though. Marlin really has no character arc that wasn't already done in Finding Nemo. At the end of that he's a happy go lucky dude, here he's back to his original grumpy self right from the start. And Hank ends up where he does just because...I guess. They never explain his fear of the ocean. The whales that are enclosed decide to randomly escape even though they seemed perfectly happy when Dory meets them.
 

It's a good movie but it doesn't come close to Zootopia or Inside Out. It is not top tier Pixar but it's also not unnecessary. It moves fast and I'm sure kids will love it but after Inside Out, I just expected it to grab me a lot more. And I definitely didn't expect it to end like that. Like seriously, c'mon man. Pixar you're better then that. There's a limit and the writers crossed it by a mile.

I'll probably watch this again when it hits BluRay in the fall but completely forget it exists after that.
 

B-/C+

Edited June 20, 2016 by somebody85

[Blankments]

Piper was an adorable short with very amusing bits, although a slight anticlimax prevents from being truly special. Gorgeous animation though.

The first five minutes of Finding Dory are absolutely brilliant. It both sells the audience entirely on why this sequel had to be made while re-contextualizing Dory's character in Finding Nemo from comic relief to tragic figure. The rest of the film can't possibly live up to this, partially because the power of this sequence lies with our prior knowledge of Dory, AKA Finding Nemo. Although Nemo is certainly a better film, Dory is more necessary and at points, more fun.

Ellen DeGeneres is once again brilliant as Dory. She adds even more pathos this go-around and anchors the film extremely well. It'd be impossible to name another voice actor on par with her this time, as Brooks is naturally given less material, and that's fine. O'Neill is pretty memorable though as Hank, Dory's co-lead in the second act of the film. All the new characters Dory encounters are actually better integrated in the plot better than in Finding Nemo, which is a relief.

Enough with comparing this to Finding Nemo though. Thankfully, the film itself doesn't even open itself to obvious comparisons. Thomas Newman's score is once again lovely, particularly because he doesn't reuse many themes from the original, giving Dory herself a new theme she rightfully deserves while also giving the score overall a more dreamy feel, much like Dory's forgetfulness. The generally new approach Newman takes reflects Andrew Stanton's direction to the entire film.

Barring some natural cameos here and there, and of course, references to the events that occurred (since it was life-changing for all three of the main cast), the film feels completely it's own beast. It's a daughter looking for her parents, and the empowerment of Dory truly growing up. Dory's short term memory may be a flaw, but Dory and the audience learns the "What would Dory do?" school of thought comes directly from her coping mechanisms, from her tragedy. But if one looks closer, one will see the pure joy and idealism that oozes from Dory's survival and immediate love for every fish she meets. This journey was one Dory and the audience both needed to take and the final scene of the film reflects the film's contemplative feel in a wonderfully subtle way.

That's not to say there aren't some flaws. Particularly, the climax of the films flirts with absurdity a bit too much, which is fine on its own, but pales in comparison with more emotionally driven climaxes of Pixar's past. It sounds odd to complain about suspension of disbelief in a film about talking fish, but it's relevant to the world both set up in this film and Finding Nemo. Also, the film sets up an emotional pay-off to one of the new characters that never actually arrives. It feels as though something was cut out in the edit deemed unnecessary just because it's Dory's movie, not this other character's. Maybe that was the best decision to make though, because Dory deserved this film entirely focused on her. Finding Dory works not only as a surprisingly necessary sequel, but as another Pixar classic that will be remembered and beloved, as always, for years to come. B+

[Captain H]

I really love this movie. The disability theme is used really well, and I honestly felt any positive impact that this movie may give to anyone that ever felt like Dory will be enough to justify it's entire existence. 

 

Hank and his overall done-ness with the world is amazing, and I certainly won't blame Pixar or Stanton if they ever decided to make a sequal/spin-off focused on him. Plus, I will totally watch that.

 

The climax is great, despite being humor driven instead of emotion driven like Pixar's strongest efforts, and seriously, that part with the falling truck is one of the most hilarous thing that Pixar have ever done.

[AniNate]

Yeah, thinking of the climax now leaves a grin on my face. It's just so quirky and over-the-top, especially with the Sigourney Weaver voiceover.