AndrewBloom
8/10 7 years ago
[8.0/10] One of the great things about *Finding Nemo* was the way it was a story about parents and children that was told from both perspectives. The easy thing to do would have been to make the story just about Marlin’s quest to find his son, with Nemo relegated to being a cute macguffin, or to make it about Nemo’s adventures away from home, with his dad simply arriving in the nick of time. Instead, the film does both, giving both characters memorable stories and engaging with their point of views, to where each grows and finds common ground by the climax of the film.
*Finding Dory* repeats this trick, but finds an interesting new direction for it by making it a story about disabilities: how they affect the people who have them, their parents, and their friends, without shortchanging either of them. It addresses Dory’s short term memory loss -- something that was mostly played for laughs in the prior film, though notably for emotional ballast as well -- and explores the ways that difference would affect the rest of Dory’s life and those around her in a more direct way.
It’s too far to call *Finding Dory* a deconstruction in that regard. The film is still a fun adventure with big laughs and colorful characters. But it succeeds in taking this amusing quirk that Dory displayed in the first film, and using it as a lens to examine the challenges that someone with physical or mental disabilities, and their loved ones, would face.
That comes through in Marlin and Nemo. Marlin is, again, frustrated with Dory. He tries to be patient and supportive, but when things go wrong and Nemo is in trouble again, he loses his cool and says something hurtful to Dory based on her condition. It’s a harsh moment, one that Nemo is aghast about as he defends Dory to his father. It speaks to the difficulties in understanding, in connecting, that come from friends and loved ones with such differences that can pop up and emerge from even those closest to someone.
It also comes through in Dory’s parents, Jenny and Charlie. The film has repeated flashbacks to the pair teaching Dory when she was a baby (and, it has to be said, baby Dory is just frickin’ adorable). The film captures the unique obstacles parents of children with disabilities face. There is a complete love and devotion from Jenny and Charlie, but also a concern. There are many scenes of these parents trying to encourage their daughter, but also to equip her for the outside world, to give her coping skills and tools to be able make it. They are endlessly loving, but also endlessly worried. The most harrowing scene in the film is where Dory overhears her mother crying and fretting about whether Dory will be able to make it on her own if something should happen to her or to them.
But most of all it comes through in Dory herself. The main story of the film sees her recovering fragments of memories from her childhood that hint to where her parents might be, which prompts her to go on a quest to find them. It shows her dealing with the thrill of those flashes and memories coming back, but also the struggles that trying to achieve all of this while forgetting so much so frequently poses.
And yet, she perseveres and succeeds. The tools her parents came up with live on in her. Even if Dory cannot remember every detail, she left her home having internalized the capability her parents tried to instill. She is resourceful. She knows to just keep swimming. Yes, sometimes she needs some assistance -- like from the camouflaging septopus Hank who becomes her reluctant running buddy -- but as Nemo points out to his dad, she has a way of figuring these things out, of intuitively understand the solutions to problems that no one else can piece together. Dory is different, yes, but no less capable or vital to the efforts of their little family, even if she occasionally requires a little extra help or patience.
The problem is that at some point, it feels as though the film has thrown one too many obstacles in Dory’s path, to where the set of hurdles she has to leap (or rather, swim) over begin to feel exhausting. To some degree this is the film earning its emotional crux, making the moments where it seems like the object of her quest is impossible, and the moments of warm reunion in the movie more impactful given what led the characters to those point. But at some point in the film, it feels like a few too many trials placed in front of Dory to get to the payoff.
At the same time, the movie does suffer from a certain amount of sequelitis. While it’s nice to check in with the assorted characters from the first film, at points their appearances feel like pandering. While it offers a new twist, *Finding Dory*’s attempts to replicate the beats of its predecessor begin to feel a little convenient in places. And the film’s also subject to the “go bigger” follow-up problems, particularly in the third-act action sequences that involves bridge-too-far implausibilities and over-extended set pieces that involve sea creatures driving cars.
Still, even when the picture sags, Pixar knows how to fill a movie with life. There are plenty of new fun characters, from a pair of territorial sea lions voiced by a pair of alums from *The Wire*, to some similarly differently-abled aquatic animals from a nature center, to another funky bird to compete with the seagulls from the last film. And the humor and charming dialogue shine throughout.
But the film’s best feature is the way it takes the idea of disability and shows all sides of how it affects people’s lives. It embraces the insecurity and hardships that entails, but also the way people like Dory enrich the lives of people around them, the way that they are capable and resourceful even if they go about things differently, and how the love of their families, both biological and adopted, stretches across oceans.
