By Abby Lass
Editor-in-Chief
3.5/5 Stars
On June 17th, Finding Dory broke records with the biggest opening weekend for an animated movie ever, and it’s not hard to see why.
The film follows the characters we fell in love with in the original Finding Nemo, which came out over a decade ago. After an endearing featurette starring a baby bird learning to face his fears, we’re plunged into Dory’s (the lovable Ellen DeGeneres) mission to find her family.
The structure of the film is a bit overly similar to its predecessor, but the new characters are just as enjoyable as the old. From territorial sea lions Fluke (Idris Elba) and Rudder (Dominic West) to psychosomatically injured beluga whale Bailey (Ty Burrell) to crotchety septipus Hank (Ed O’Neill), this new story is peopled with lively personalities both familiar and foreign.
It might go unnoticed, given the generally exceptional standards of Pixar’s animation team, but the visuals in this film truly are spectacular. While the movement of the fish through their environment is stunning, this mastery of craft is clearest in the pre-film short, Piper, which depicts an ocean textured enough to make you smell salt and a rumpled bird that looks ready to fly off the screen.
At times it felt like the film was using the stunning visuals and cajoling characters as a crutch to avoid actual storytelling– though to be fair, the entire premise of both this and the original film is relatively straightforward– and the flashbacks often feel more like road blocks than revelations. However, the more we just keep swimming, the clearer the film’s message becomes.
This is a film about love and family, of course, but it’s also about the importance of embracing and accepting different forms of intelligence.
Through Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Dory’s transformations, we learn about how different people solve problems in different ways, and how, by experimenting and having faith in others, we can help ourselves grow as individuals. We are shown how far belief in someone can take them, and that everyone will get where they need to be eventually.
Finding Dory is a film for the left behind, for those who have lost faith that they will ever make it to where they want to go. It’s a silly success for Pixar with a message that will always be relevant, and is definitely worth seeing (and maybe even re-seeing).
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