Finding Dory

I’ve never been crazy about Finding Nemo. I think of it as a perfect family Pixar film that looks great and stuffs the audience with the right values combined with humour and suspense. Good craftsmanship, but I just prefer the more daring, cheeky and contrived films with rats cooking in a restaurant or pensioners putting a million balloons on their house and flying off to Argentina with a fat Asian scout. Finding Dory wasn't a particularly anticipated film for me, so I can't speak to disappointment, but the fact is that it's another completely unnecessary animated film from a studio that was considered the absolute top of its field just a few years ago. It's not a weak Cars 2, but it's far too similar to the first one, only with less interesting supporting characters and starring a talkative heroine who is more annoying than entertaining. It looks great, the jokes work as they should, and it's touching in the right places, but that's it. Finding Dory feels like it's going to neutral, banking on the fact that people will come anyway because they like Nemo and probably want to see the same thing, only with a blue fish instead of an orange one. I'd like more than that, though. I'm used to a bit more class and ambition from this bunch. (16/05/2017)

Sure, this isn't Finding Nemo, or rather, it's not as good. But the return to the characters, the development of what we've seen, some nostalgic encounters, and new encounters, all work here, as well as the nice and touching story that brought a tear to my eye. You simply want to come back to these characters because they're still great. (01/08/2016)

The problem I have with Finding Dory is that the entire narrative is essentially based on her short-term memory problem, which doesn’t seem like enough to me. I'm not saying that this interaction and collision with reality wasn't funny at all, just that unfortunately all the "short term memory" jokes soon become repetitive and simply boring. Compared to its predecessor, this sequel is overall less funny and paradoxically contains more of the serious scenes, which instead generate negative emotions. But I just have to give it an extra half star for that Mark Eben. 3.5 stars. (25/03/2019)

A fine sequel which focuses on my favorite - memory loss. This time they are trying to find parents, not a child. New characters, an aquarium full of adventure and the outrageously cute little Dora. I’m not sure that this brought any new revelations, but personally I was very pleased to return to this undersea world. Superb. (02/04/2018)

Because it took thirteen years to make this sequel, the screenwriters had enough time to think about it properly; I did not believe it would be a disaster. On the other hand, I was expecting that it would be much more of a mess by focusing the narrative on Dory as the main protagonist. In the end, the result is very good, and Pixar has managed to keep the bar of this franchise still very high. The animation is, of course, perfect, and the characters, both the old ones and the new ones, are also very good. The narrative does feature a few minor quirks, although I could not find anything majorly bothersome. The ending was good, and I found the moment with Dory and Marlin interestingly profound. So, in the end, they pulled Finding Dory off really well, though I do not know why, although I was expecting a bit more. 8/10. (20/06/2016)