Even after merging with Disney, Pixar remains the most innovative and intelligent animation house in the business, but like any Hollywood studio, they love telling a good story twice—or more, if box office traffic allows. Pixar’s latest feature film, Finding Dory, is a belated sequel to 2003’s Finding Nemo. Nemo (voiced this time by Hayden Rolence) and his dad Marlin (Albert Brooks) are still in the story, but as supporting characters. The sequel focuses on a memory-impaired blue tang fish, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres).
Dory’s parents (Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy) encouraged her to memorize her name and the line “I suffer from short term memory loss” in case her befuddled behavior needs explanation—or she gets lost. Sure enough, the worst happens. Parents and child are separated. Dory has nearly forgotten where she comes from, but glimmers of memory flash and disappear, especially the idea that her parents are across the ocean in California. With the help of Marlin, Nemo and a surfer-dude sea turtle, Dory makes it across. And then the adventure begins.
Like all Pixar films, Finding Dory operates on multiple levels. For young kids, it’s a spectacle of color, motion and slapstick as the adult jokes and pop-culture references race above their heads. Alert grown-ups will notice that Pixar often keys into particular anxieties or concerns in society. Finding Dory can’t help but trigger thoughts not only of the spreading plague of Alzheimer’s but of what one psychologist has termed “distraction dementia,” the stunted memory and impaired focus caused by the over-stimulated, social-mediated environment of contemporary life.
The perennial themes of Pixar films are accounted for in Finding Dory: the importance of strong family ties, whether the characters are dinosaurs, cars, monsters or fish; the possibility of overcoming the indifference or hostility of others through a community of friends; the importance of exceeding limitations and jumping the barriers that could hold protagonists down.
Dory receives many helping fins and tentacles along the way, especially from the resourceful if at first self-serving octopus, Hank (Ed O’Neill). As important as what others can do for Dory are the lessons they teach about what she can do for herself. As usual in Pixarland, the non-human creatures in Finding Dory are more sympathetic than the human creatures in most current live-action films.
Finding Dory
Ellen DeGeneres
Albert Brooks
Directed by Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane
Rated PG
