Directors: Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane (co-director)
Writers: Andrew Stanton, Victoria Strause
Cast: Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Hayden Rolence, Ed O'Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Idris Elba, Dominic West
Runtime: 97 mins.
2016
There was a lengthy, downright dynastic period of time during which the release of a new Pixar movie meant the release of a new guaranteed classic. We are firmly out of that period. Of the five films released before Finding Dory, only one could be considered great by any significant metric. So it became difficult to care about the impending Finding Nemo sequel, a feeling only exacerbated by: 1) Pixar's increasing reliance on cash-in sequels and prequels, and 2) Director Andrew Stanton's recent career dip with the catastrophic failure of John Carter, an incident that makes transparent Stanton's desire to jump on board with a guaranteed cash-in of his own.
Yet I tried to be hopeful about Finding Dory, even as it kept slipping off my radar. Surely Pixar has created enough cinematic magic to warrant a bit of good faith. Too bad Finding Dory does little enough to reward that faith.
There's nothing broken in Finding Dory. In that sense, Monsters University is the Pixar film it most resembles. They both share a disappointing but expected problem: In trying to open out the world established in the original, they actually end up flattening it. Cameos from old favorite characters feel shallow, and encounters with new characters are unsuccessfully groping to capture the magic of comparable encounters in the original. It goes deeper than that. Just as the switch in setting between Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University felt derivative, the playground in Finding Dory is much smaller and less compelling than its predecessor.
Despite the title, Dory is only sometimes, not always, the one who needs to be found. The crux of the narrative finds Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) in search of her long lost parents with the help of Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence, a subtle recast that I didn't even register until now). This search takes them all over Los Angeles's Marine Life Institute as they follow lead after lead down the rabbit hole of Dory's spotty memory.
The Marine Life Institute is a cool combination aquarium/fish hospital, but it pales in comparison to the grandness and mystery of the ocean in Finding Nemo. Technology may have rocketed forward in the thirteen years since that movie, but as a whole Finding Dory is less visually impressive--a huge disappointment. The new setting also raises the issue of credulity. Pixar has always expertly kept just within the boundaries of what could be considered plausible in the worlds they build for us, but Finding Dory drops the ball here. The majority of the movie takes place in an aquarium, which is primarily on solid land. The majority of the movie also requires the characters to maintain a high degree of mobility. The result is visually dissonant, with the fish performing ridiculous feats of container-to-container acrobatics, and continually having to figure out the same tiresome problem of how exactly they are going to get from point A to point B to point C. The frenetic plotting does not help this matter at all.
Back when Finding Dory was announced, the general concern was that, although Dory made for a delightful comic relief sidekick to Marlin's straight man (straight fish?), it was hard to imagine her erratic and borderline-grating personality headlining a movie. Finding Dory manages to make it work, but doesn't quite muster up a convincing argument for why it should have been attempted. DeGeneres delivers a solid vocal performance. It's not nearly as funny as her Nemo work (the entire film is surprisingly weak comedically), but she grounds it in enough emotional resonance to carry the narrative. The trouble is that structuring the story around Dory and her memory loss makes for a plot device that repeats ad nauseam. Dory goes somewhere she remembers, forgets why she's there, free associates another memory, goes there, repeat. Someone says something that triggers a memory of her parents, she has a flashback to a loving exchange with said parents, repeat. Marlin and Nemo follow her somewhere, lose her, follow her somewhere else, lose her, etc. It's meant to be propulsive, but it's just irritating. Rather than feeling like progress, it feels circular. It's sad to say that I was made bored and impatient by a Pixar movie; I've watched Toy Story over a hundred times, and am still engrossed by every moment of that film.
Finding Dory attempts to engage with themes of ableism: Dory's short term memory loss, an octopus with a missing tentacle, a shark who is cripplingly nearsighted, another shark who has psychosomatically forgotten how to echo-locate, and so on. There's potential in this underpinning, but the movie swiftly drops these threads. Most of the characters simply decide to get better rather than learn to live with their condition, and Hank the septopus (Ed O'Neill) is ridiculously agile, so we wouldn't even have noticed his disability if he didn't mention it offhandedly. No pun intended. Even in its slightly more cursory engagement with themes of ableism, Finding Nemo treats the topic with far more depth and pathos than anything we see here.
It seems like I'm taking Finding Dory out at the knees, but it's a perfectly alright movie. There's no way I would have been so disappointed had it not been the follow-up to one of the more flawless movies I've ever seen. As it stands, you could spend an acceptable, even entertaining, couple of hours with Finding Dory. But you wouldn't miss much if you didn't.
2.5 / 5 BLOBS
The Short: Piper
The story is moving, and it is buoyed by some absolutely gorgeous visuals. This world of sea, sand, shells, and pebbles could feel dull, but Pixar makes it wondrous, planting us firmly in the perspective of a baby bird that is new to this strange landscape. Love, fear, and joy shoot through this short like bullets.
3.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment