Maybe you heard rumors about a human lesbian couple turning up in Pixar’s Finding Dory. I was prepared to ignore the issue, but it suddenly seems much less silly now. Two women briefly appear who could possibly be interpreted as gay, but the real gay couple in this animated kids’ film is the two British-accented bull sea lions (voiced by Idris Elba and Dominic West) who offer helpful advice to our heroes when they’re not busy viciously defending their shared sunbathing rock against anyone else who might want to lie on it.
The rest of the advance hype around this movie has been as adulatory as it has been for other Pixar movies. I’m sorry, I just can’t join in. True, the studio’s history has set an awfully high bar, and this movie’s predecessor, Finding Nemo, had the advantage of giving us our first glimpse of its wildly colorful underwater world. The sequel would never match that. Unfortunately, those aren’t the only issues in play here.
Picking up a year after the events of Finding Nemo, this movie promotes the sweetly absent-minded blue tang named Dory (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) from sidekick to lead, as she suddenly remembers being separated from her parents (voiced by Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy) and immediately dashes off looking for them, despite the fact that her memory is leading her all the way across the Pacific. Tagging along behind her are her clownfish pal Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks) and his son Nemo (voiced by Hayden Rolence), who fear with some reason that if she goes off alone, she’ll forget the way back or worse.
Most of the action takes place at and around an aquarium on the California coast where Dory traces her parents and where tourists get prerecorded information and instructions from Sigourney Weaver (who voices herself). The fish wind up getting a man on the inside, a grumpy but multifariously capable octopus named Hank (voiced by Ed O’Neill) who keeps escaping from his tank. I like the ambivalent way the movie depicts the aquarium. On one hand, it rescues marine wildlife when they’re in trouble, and some of the creatures like Hank and the sea lions regard it as a haven. On the other hand, it’s a prison to others like a nearsighted whale shark (voiced by Kaitlin Olson) who keeps hitting her head against the walls of her enclosure, and it’s a place that our heroes wind up needing to escape from.
Unfortunately, director/co-writer Andrew Stanton isn’t nearly as good with the rest of this. The banter among the side characters isn’t nearly as sharp as it was with Nemo’s aquarium pals from the first movie, who briefly appear here after the end credits have rolled. Worse, the plot machinery creaks audibly as the movie separates Dory at various points from everyone trying to help her. Much like Toy Story 3, this becomes a prison break movie, and the mechanics of getting the fish over dry land into and out of the aquarium strains the writers’ resources. The whole story is supposed to be about Dory figuring out how to survive on her own despite her severe memory impairment, and this isn’t accomplished in any convincing way. The same goes for her attempt to unite her biological family with the adoptive family she’s found on the reef, which doesn’t have the same gripping power as Marlin’s quest to reunite with Nemo in the first movie. Like Pixar’s best films, that one has devastating emotional power. This one never comes close despite its mighty efforts.
There’s still the studio’s customarily polished animation, and some funny bits involving the seals and a giant clam who spews jokes like a bad standup comic and forces the clownfish to listen to his wailing about his ex-girlfriend. The sequence with our heroes fleeing for their lives from a giant squid is a good scare, too. Much of the movie is genuinely entertaining, but some of it betrays the same desperation that you find in bad animated flicks, as the filmmakers keep things loud, fast, and colorful in the hope that the smallest audience members won’t get bored. We expect better from Pixar.
The feature is accompanied by a dialogue-free short called Piper, about a baby sandpiper who figures out a new way to dig up food on the beach. It’s a nice, compact, and perfectly charming little work.
[box_info]Finding Dory
Voices by Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks. Directed by Andrew Stanton. Written by Andrew Stanton and Valerie Strouse. Rated PG.[/box_info]
