Screened Out – Finding Dory

[four-star-rating]Voices of Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O’Neill, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy[/four-star-rating]

Returning under the sea with one of Pixar’s favorite characters makes for a sure bet. Finding Dory uses the same team of creative experts and voice talents that made Finding Nemo so wonderful. So what if it doesn’t – forgive the pun – reach the same depth as its predecessor. It’s still a joy to swim around with these personalities for a few moments.

Andrew Stanton – the director and originator of both stories for Nemo and Dory – is back helming the ship. (If you want to know why he’s the right man for this job, go look up his very personal talk on Ted.com).

Dory (DeGeneres) has always been an unusual blue tang fish, as we all know. She suffers from short-term memory loss. It’s what made her so delightfully daring in the first film. But we also know it can be exasperating for others around her.

It can also be heartbreaking, like when young Dory loses her family.

As an older fish, suddenly, Dory starts to recall snippets of her childhood, including her missing parents. Her longing to understand who she is and where she’s from – and why she has this malady – lead her and her friends Marlin and Nemo (Brooks and Rolence) across the ocean to the California coast.

Along the way, we get to meet some new characters. Obviously, Stanton and Pixar know that the primary draw among the newbies is Hank, an Octopus. As voiced by O’Neill and animated by the studio, he is both a delightfully cranky cephalopod and a joy to watch. I mean, he can stretch and swing, and he has the gift of camouflage. He’s just cool! Experiencing him pour Dory into an empty coffee carafe and take her among pipes, scaffolds, and children’s strollers is pure pleasure.

Buried under all this fun are a couple deeper questions that often compete with each other. One theme is whether family comprises the people you’re related to or the people you bond with. The other – and bigger – theme is about how people with disabilities cope, and how their loved ones cope. Dory’s parents spend so much time trying to build Dory’s survival skills. They know this little fish will grow in a world that will be unkind and even cruel to someone who cannot remember more than ten seconds. Marlin becomes exasperated with Dory, even though her disability is an inspiration to Marlin’s own son with his small right fin.

So, it’s a slight – very slight – letdown that the themes don’t coalesce as powerfully as in Nemo – which is a children’s film about how fear can make one a bad parent. Pretty powerful stuff.

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Dory swims a little more scattered. In fact, Hank the Octopus’s struggle doesn’t have anything to do with living with handicaps – a greatly missed opportunity. Instead, everything sinks to the lighter, easier theme about finding your family.

Slight wobbles in the boat may mean Dory isn’t the classic that Nemo was. That certainly doesn’t rob this film of any of its entertainment factor. Solid, interesting, and empathy-inducing characters in a rich, intriguing setting will always win the day. In that sense, Dory is an excellent catch!