Finding Dory, the latest animated Pixar film, is built on characters from Finding Nemo. The memory-challenged fish Dory (Ellen DeGeneris) goes on a quest, aided by Nemo’s Dad Marlon (Albert Brooks). Pixar is exceptional for bringing depth of story to animated films, and the story here just isn’t up to snuff. It’s that tired trope about finding one’s parents, augmented with a nice message about acknowledging and overcoming one’s disabilities.
The cleverest part of Finding Dory is the new octopus character of Hank (voiced by Ed O’Neill of Modern Family). Hank is able to help Dory with his ability to change his coloring for camouflage, to fit through and into virtually every opening and to clasp objects in his tentacles. That allows for Dory to get thru a lot more plot devices and supplies lots of comic situations.
There’s also a very funny running joke involving Sigourney Weaver and another one with three sea lions on a rock. The dialogue and voicework are very good.
The animation in Finding Dory is high quality, but it’s not the Great Leap Forward animation that sometimes thrills us at Pixar films. The bottom line on Finding Dory is that it may not be a Must See, but it won’t be painful to sit thru twenty times with your small kids .
However, one of joys of Pixar is that they precede their features with short films, many of which (For the Birds, La Luna, The Blue Umbrella, Lava) are at least as good as the features. The short shown with Finding Dory is Piper, a tale about a young seabird’s first lesson in finding food in the surf. The animation in Piper is just exquisite; watch for the grains of sand, the feathers and down on the little bird and the above- and below-the-surf shots. Piper’s story is sweet, uplifting and funny and worth watching on its own.