Movie Review: “Finding Dory” Searches For Deep Meaning But Ends Up In Shallow Waters

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The friendly-but-forgetful blue tang fish reunites with her loved ones, and everyone learns a few things about the real meaning of family along the way.

The fact that Pixar is making a “Cars 3” is disheartening, to say the least. Not only is it the least successful offering by the typically “can do no wrong” studio (nothing about the “Cars” universe makes sense to me), it also continues their “sequelitis” trend. Why make a third part to a critically-panned sequel? With the exception of the “Toy Story” trilogy (about to become a quadrilogy, by the way), which built upon its subtle themes, developed its characters and made it all feel like a fluid story, Pixar’s other prequel, “Monsters University,” proved to be a mere rehashing of the original, with nary an original bone in its flimsy plot. Oh, and “The Incredibles 2” is on the way. Yay.

Now Andrew Stanton, the man who helmed two instant classics, “Wall-E” and “Finding Nemo,” returns with a similarly half-baked retelling/sequel of the original tale. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, the voice cast delivers, and some scenes verge on pure brilliance (Pixar wouldn’t have it any other way), but I found myself asking the question: Is the gargantuan production house, now owned by Disney, running out of original ideas, or just cashing in on proven successes?

“Finding Dory” starts off briskly enough, and the way it incorporates the original film’s storyline into part two is rather ingenuous. Ellen DeGeneres reprises her role as Dory, a secondary character, now taking central stage. Dory’s folks Charlie (Eugene Levy) and Jenny (Diane Keaton) attempt to deal with her disability – memory loss – by making sure little Dory remembers the line “Hi, my name is Dory and I have short-term memory loss” and finds her “way home” by following a carefully paved-out sequence of shells. Those scenes mirror Nemo’s struggle with his little fin and adjusting to the adult world in Stanton’s first film. (Being Different and Proud are two of the many, many themes spelled out in this undersea adventure, and there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s just that they are all both too blunt and diluted, a myriad of motifs, such as reinforcing the horrors of animal captivity, living in the moment, etc, etc).

Dory, of course, gets lost, and meets Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) two years later. After their rollickin’ adventure, Dory spends her days pestering father and son, even joining Nemo on his school field trips, to the dismay of teacher Mr. Ray (Bob Peterson). Mr. Ray speaks of the Undertow, which leads to Dory gradually remembering her parents. Marlin reluctantly agrees to join her on another adventure; “I know a guy,” he says. The “guy” turns out to be Crush (Andrew Stanton), the buzzed-out sea turtle, a favorite from the first film, that takes Marlin, Nemo and Dory to California. On their way, the trio escapes a vicious sea creature and get separated at the Marine Life Institute, where Dory’s parents may or may not be held captive. As a result, Marlin and Nemo try to find Dory, as Dory tries to find her folks…and herself.

Dominic West and Idris Elba provide one of the highlights as sea lions Rudder and Fluke – replacements for the “mine, mine, mine” hilarity of “Finding Nemo”’s seagulls. Their deadpan delivery, and verbal abuse of a Groucho-Marx like character, provide a glimpse of what the film could have been, had it contained more non-sequiturs and humor like this. Becky, a one-eyes bird-like…thing, is another marvelous (and bonkers) creation. Other new characters include the snarky octopus Hank (Ed O’Neill); the visually-impaired whale shark Destiny (Kaitlin Olson); Bailey (Ty Burrell), a beluga whale, whose way of communication is not dissimilar to that of Batman’s digital vision at the end of “The Dark Knight”; and a pearl oyster, whose heart was broken by a clam.

I know it’s all animation and you’re not supposed to wonder about the probabilities of it all. That said, the best animation makes you buy things within the magical universes it creates. In “Cars,” it creeped the engine fuel out of me that the Roman Colosseum still exists in a world solely inhabited by cars…did vehicles take over Earth, Skynet-style? In “Finding Dory,” how the urchin do the fish know what their species are, without ever interacting with humans? How do they travel so effortlessly between Australia (in “Finding Nemo”) and friggin’ California, without the climate changes making their little bodies float up lifelessly to the shimmering ocean surface? Little Nemo gets slapped around so much, and goes through so many polluted containers – both (I assume) salt-water and not – he must be made of Adamantium.

The animation is very pretty – one can only imagine the amount of work that went into making Ed O’Neill’s Hank, an octopus (well, technically “septopus”) desperate to get to Cleveland (“30 Rock” made Cleveland funny a million years ago), blend in and out of things, his texture changing with every move. The underwater scenes are pure eye candy – but, shockingly, not that big of an improvement over the 2003 original. After the jaw-dropping effects of the recent “The Good Dinosaur,” this feels like a minor step back. There is an intricate, POV shot at one point that takes you in and out of water – but again, it’s a replica of the “escape the aquarium” sequence in “Finding Nemo.”

The film certainly does not side-step sentimentality. “Not everything in life is easy to do” is one of the Buddhist-like teachings in this film. “Someone with three hearts shouldn’t be so mean,” Dory tells another character. There is also a dearth of witty one-liners (the Sigourney Weaver “thing” is funny at first, and then gets increasingly less so each time the joke’s used). The best one comes from one of the human scientists, who tells off her goofing colleague: “We’re scientists. We’ve talked about this.” Another title for the film could also be Ex Machina (shout out to Jeremy Scott of Youtube’s brilliant Cinemasins), as so many darn coincidences happen in this film, it’s a wonder Dory got lost in the first place.

At times, it feels like the film is desperately fishing (sorry) for moments of enchantment that came so effortlessly in the earlier Pixar offerings. The synopsis speaks for itself: “everyone learns a few things about the real meaning of family along the way.” The vague generalization of that consensus represents the unfocused nature and watered-down (pun intended) values of “Finding Dory,” age-old truisms that are wearing thin in family entertainment – especially when compared to Pixar’s boundary-breaking, sharp-as-a-blade “Inside Out.” Not nearly as incisive and mind-blowing as that film, nor as photo-realistically beautiful as the studio’s recent, similarly by-the-numbers (but with an “at least” original story) “The Good Dinosaur,” “Finding Dory” is nevertheless a pleasant, slight little distraction. Judging by the “oohs” and “aahs” at the jam-packed, toddler-infested press screening, Pixar’s latest, strategically-placed bait will make the wee ones bite in hordes (or should it be schools? I’m all punned-out, guys), while the adults will find it as exciting as…well, bait-fishing. Here’s hoping Pixar’s upcoming “Coco” brings back some of that much-needed ingenuity, for which the epic studio is known.

In theaters June 17th