Finding Dory

Brothers and sisters in the congregation, I come to you today as a once fiery believer who lost his faith for a time but is now coming back into the fold. I speak, of course, of my faith in Pixar, the once infallible digital animation production company. During their eleven film streak of near perfection, it seemed as though Pixar saw all, knew all, and made all good movies. There was a season for Toy Story and a season for The Incredibles, a season for Ratatouille and a season for Wall-E.  And lo, I was a believer. But then, the company (and therefore its audiences) spent a season wandering in the valley of the shadow of the sequel. Cars 2, Monsters University, and the should-have-been-straight-to-DVD-garbage spinoff Planes shook me. Yea, verily.

But recently it would seem that the scales have fallen from the eyes of Pixar, and digital light once again fills its body. The Good Dinosaur was solidly good. Inside Out, while a little maudlin for much of the film, was touching and brilliantly envisioned. Now comes Finding Dory, what could have been another miserable, slavish money grab but instead is a funny, moving story executed with best-in-the business animation. There is reason to have hope and possibly faith in Pixar once more. 

Finding Dory returns to the characters and setting of Finding Nemo a year after the events of the first film. Nemo is still in school, Marlin is still a worrywart, and Dory is still endearingly, maddeningly forgetful. The film kicks into gear when Dory finally remembers something about her past. She suddenly remembers that she had parents – loving, protective parents who spent their lives trying to compensate for her near total inability to remember – anything. So the film becomes Dory’s quest, assisted by Marlin and Nemo, to return home and find her parents.

Their search leads them to the California coast and an aquarium called the Marine Life Institute, which turns out to be Dory’s original home. The team gets split up and a good chunk of the film is spent on Dory attempting a prison-break-like escape from the aquarium while Marlin and Nemo try to break in. 

Ellen Degeneres again voices Dory with her halting, idiosyncratic delivery that conveys a combination of innate goodness and sweet naiveté. Degeneres is hardly the person who’s voice you would think of as evocative and moving, but her performance as Dory is exactly that. It’s sweet without being saccharine and funny without being clownish or ironic. 

The other performance standout is Ed O’Neil as Hank, an octopus that helps Dory escape the acquairum. O’Neil’s voicework is crusty and grumpy but also vulnerable and longing. His voice combined with the ingenious visual depictions of the seven-legged octopus make Hank one of the best, most memorable animated characters to come along in years.

The best Pixar movies are ultimately about family relationships, their necessity and the tensions inherent in them. Finding Dory, like the Toy Story films, A Bug’s Life, and Monster’\s Incorporated, again demonstrates that family is as much something we make and choose as it is something we’re born into.

But specifically, Finding Dory makes a profound statement about parenting. When she’s a child, Dory’s parents lay out paths of shells that all lead back to their home to help her find her way back. When adult Dory returns, she finds a shell house with dozens of paths spread out in every direction, obviously left by her parents in hopes that she would find her way to them. That image and the idea behind it sum up most of what is important (to me at least) about being a parent. It’s lovely and powerful and was enough to make me at least a cautious Pixar believer again.