Movie Review: Finding Dory

It has been 13 years since Finding Nemo arrived in theaters, and one of my first big memories after moving to North Dakota was going to see that movie with my mom. 

While it has taken a while for Finding Dory to come to fruition, it takes place only a year after she swam into Marlin during his frantic search to find his son Nemo. While a sequel wasn’t necessarily needed, I do think that the first film left enough open to definitely warrant exploring their world more. From the opening scene, featuring a baby Dory (probably one of the cutest things I have ever seen), I felt so happy to be back in the ocean with these characters again.

The primary plot of the film is finding out who Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) is and where her mother and father are. Although her short-term memory loss continues to cause some delays, Dory has flashbacks that help her piece together her past, and Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo assist Dory on her excursion, which takes them to the Marine Life Institute in Morro Bay, California.

For me, I have always wondered where Dory came from, what she was doing up until she went across the ocean with Marlin, and where she learned to speak whale. All of which are answered in this film. I also felt like there were many more ocean creatures left to discover, which this film has plenty of, including an orange camouflaging octopus with seven tentacles (Ed  O’Neill), a near-sighted whale shark (Kaitlin Olson), a beluga whale with a head injury (Ty Burrell), a few oddball seals, a wacky loon, and a bevy of adorable otters. My biggest question though was definitely what happened to the Tank Gang, who when we last saw them, were left floating in the ocean tied up in little baggies. If you stay through until the very end of the credits, you will get a brief answer (although not at all what I expected for those unlucky fish!).

Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks still perfectly voice the lead characters. As a big fan of Marlin though, I wished he was in it a bit more, because he takes a bit of a backseat to Hank the octopus. That being said, I enjoyed meeting the new characters, and was pleased to see a few more of the original characters like Mr. Ray, Crush, Squirt, Nemo’s school friends, and a mention of Bruce the shark from Marlin. The animation is beautiful and the story is heartwarming, even though there is a very unrealistic ending involving a delivery truck.

I liked this film during my first viewing, but saw it again the next day, where I liked it even more. Similar to how I felt watching Monsters University for the first time, I imagine the film will continue to grow on me the more times I watch it and the anticipation/comparison to the first film fades away. It doesn’t really quite stand up on the same level as the original, but I didn’t expect it to. It is nice to be with these characters once more and take another memorable journey through the big wide ocean (the short film before the movie starts, “Piper”, is also worth the ticket price!).