Finding Nemo / Finding Dory

Year: 2003 (Nemo), 2016 (Dory)
Running time: 100 minutes (Nemo), 97 minutes (Dory)
Certificate: U
Language: English
Screenplay: Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson, David Reynolds (Nemo), Andrew Stanton, Victoria Strouse (Dory)
Director: Andrew Stanton
Starring (voices): Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Dafoe, Brad Garret, Allison Janney, Austin Pendleton, Stephen Root, Vicki Lewis, Joe Ranft, Geoffrey Rush, Andrew Stanton, Nicholas Bird, Bob Peterson, Barry Humphries, Eric Bana, Bruce Spence, Bill Hunter, LuLu Ebeling, John Ratzenberger, Elizabeth Perkins, Ed O'Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Hayden Rolence, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Sloane Murray, Idris Elba, Dominic West, Sigourney Weaver

Marlin and Dory hitch a 'righteous' ride on the EAC.

I’m running out of ways to say how brilliantly imaginative Pixar are. Finding Nemo was a massive hit and thoroughly deserving of it. Marlin (Albert Brooks) is a clown fish who suffers the loss of not only his mate Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), but also all but one of his offspring in an attack from an ocean predator. The only survivor is merely a cracked egg Marlin names Nemo (Alexander Gould), and the bereaved father swears that he will never let anything happen to him. As a result of the damage he took whilst he was an egg, Nemo has a damaged fin and the constant attention of an overprotective father. Marlin's heavy-handedness naturally causes Nemo to rebel and during one heated exchange Nemo ventures too far from the protection of the coral and is picked up by a human and transported to a dentist's fish tank in Sydney. A frantic Marlin immediately sets off in pursuit of the boat, but soon loses it in the wide ocean.

Unable to give up, Marlin teams up with the only fish around willing to help, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang with short-term memory loss. The story follows two strands for the majority of the film then. Firstly is Marlin and Dory's trek across the ocean to find Marlin's son, facing everything from jellyfish, to an underwater minefield, to a trio of vegetarian sharks led by Bruce (Barry Humphries), as well as riding the East Australian Current with a surfer-dude turtle named Crush (voiced by director Andrew Stanton) and being almost swallowed by a both a whale and two pelicans, one of whom is named Nigel (Geoffrey Rush) and helps them to finally make it to Nemo's tank.

Nemo meets the Tank Gang.

The second story strand follows Nemo as he befriends the Tank Gang, led by Gill (Willem Dafoe), a Moorish Idol who is constantly trying to escape. Nemo finds a kindred spirit in Gill, who also has a damaged fin. As you might expect, the happy ending is never really in doubt, but the journey is a huge amount of fun, and as it's Pixar, there is some heavy emotional heft to stop the film being insubstantial - Nemo learns that his physical impairment is no bar to achievement despite all the time his dad used to worry about him and Marlin realises that he has been stifling Nemo with his insistence on never letting anything happen to him and learns to lay off a little.

As with every Pixar film, the quality of the animation is utterly astounding – everything underwater has a slight sheen to it to lend it realism (yes I know the animals have faces and can talk, but you know what I mean), but this never distracts from what’s going on; before long, you don’t notice it anymore, apart from to marvel at the attention to detail.

Dory, Marlin and Nemo set off on another adventure.

13 years is a long time for a sequel to arrive, but Finding Nemo became such a part of western culture that the risk that the original would have been forgotten by the time Finding Dory arrived was non-existent. As the title suggests, the sequel focuses on the blue tang and her journey to find her family. Dory remembers very little about what happened to her, but slowly events begin to trigger long-buried flashes of memory and, determined to find her family, Dory sets off to rediscover herself. Her journey leads her to the Marine Life Institute where we meet some colourful new characters, best of which is Hank (Ed O'Neill) an octopus who is able to camouflage himself and uses this talent to give himself free reign throughout the institute.

Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo (this time voiced by Hayden Rolence) are trying their damnedest to break into the Institute to help Dory, with the assistance of some unusual characters, including a scruffy but useful Common Loon named Becky who gives them a lift into the institute via bucket. Unlike Finding Nemo, I was never quite sure if Dory would manage to find her parents, but there is a beautiful moment when, as these things go, Dory is at her lowest and has just about given up and the final and most important memory surfaces and she manages to follow a trail of shells just like she was taught as a child. It's wonderful.

A young Dory, before losing her parents.

Finding Dory is full of comedy moments ingeniously realised (a truck, driven by an octopus, flying off a cliff edge into the sea, in slow motion, to the strains of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World is, from the genius build up beforehand to the tender moment when Hank holds Dory safe through the landing is perfect, and peak Pixar) and hilarious characters, but its more character-driven moments hit you like a ton of emotional bricks. The fact that after all this time, Dory's mum (Diane Keaton) and dad (Eugene Levy) have never given up and are still setting out trails of shells for Dory to follow home. The fact that Dory's condition is never presented as a weakness or a problem, but just another part of who she is, without any of the well-meaning but misguided attempts you so often see to set disabilities apart as something to take centre stage, eclipsing the person behind. Dory has short-term memory loss, not is short-term memory loss, and her life and personality is every bit as full as any other character, even with this facet.

More Pixar magic, highly recommended.

Score:
Finding Nemo: 8/10
Finding Dory: 8/10

Praise is inevitably high for Finding Nemo - see this review from Mark at The Telegraph. The same is generally true for Finding Dory, as seen in this review from Ben at Screen Rant. I can't help feeling however, that, based on his review, Peter at The Guardian must have fallen asleep at the start and made up a best guess.