Finding Dory
If your children enjoyed Finding Nemo, they will certainly enjoy this return to the dizzyingly beautiful below the sea world that Pixar have created.
Thirteen years on from Finding Nemo (2003), Dory (voiced by Ellen de Generes) is living contentedly enough with Nemo and Marlin, her little orange clownfish friends, but she still suffers from short-term memory loss and has vague recollections of the family she left behind. “All I know is I miss them,” she says of her parents in that plaintive, yearning voice. Humour based around her forgetfulness can only be stretched so far without becoming repetitive or cruel. It could easily be very irritating for audiences to have to deal with a heroine stuck so permanently in an endless present.
This, though, turns out to be one of Pixar’s most charming films, expertly blending whimsy, screwball humour and pathos. It even has an epic quality as Dory embarks on her quest to track down the mum and dad she can barely remember. Dory is optimistic and very resourceful in her own intuitive way. Her travels lead her eventually to a Californian Marine Life Institute which Hollywood actress Sigourney Weaver presides over. Her parents are somewhere here. Humans don’t emerge from the film in an especially favourable light. They’re always trying to transport fish against their will to Cleveland or sticking their grubby tourist hands in pools to grab them.
Finding Dory
Year: 2016
Country: USA
Cert: U
Duration: 97 mins
Dir: Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane
'a dazzling and technically impressive return to form'
Reviews
Robbie Collin on an 'eerily beautiful, deeply emotional' film
Wendy Ide on a 'strikingly lovely' film
Venue: William Loveless Hall