Finding Dory Review: Not So A-Dory-able!

What The Fish! Finding Dory…Not So A-Dory-able

Animation film with Ellen DeGeneres as Dory

Directed by Andrew Stanton

Movie Review: Fish kadi….A new link in the Finding Nemo series!!Amd trust me, there will be other films in the series afterFinding Dory…Maybe it will be Finding(A Fish Called)  Wanda next?

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Ah Wandas never cease!  And the sheer pleasure of watching the all-blue lineup of fish in Finding Dory is great tonic to the eyes though not of much solace to the soul. There are the voices that give the film’s oceanic scale an epic tone thugh not a commensurate purpose of intent. Ellen De Generes voices Dory, our pert befuddled heroine suffering from short-term memory loss(yes,finally a Disney animation hero with a psychological disability!) who gets separated from her parents(well spoken, by Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton).

DeGenres make Dory’s story so adorable you want to love the film’s message of freedom for sea creatures wholeheartedly.

Lamentably, there’s too much repetition in this second film from the first. Too much  of the over-cute goings-on here  seems to depend on déjà vu rather than innovation for efficacy. So we get  a consciously designed feisty spaced out  female fish making her way “home” , to gender-assert the credentials of the first film where little Nemowas lost and had to find his home.

Yes Nemo too is back in Finding Dory, accompanied by his sullen but soft-heart father. Son and father are voiced with vigorous relish by Hayden Rolence and Albert Brooks.

But the clear scene-stealer here is the surly self-serving but well-meaning octopus Hank , voiced with virulence and virtue by Ed  O’Neal . Hank, a Octopus with a lost tentacle, is one among many sea creatures who helps Dory find her parents. Hanks is only faking the growl. There are no bad creatures in this film. Unlike The Jungle Book where much of the dramatic impact came from the terrifying Sher Khan’s determination to destroy little Mowgli, Dory in this ode to  oceanic cuteness is threatened only by the excruciating sweetness all around her.

Like its far-superior predecessor  Finding Dory comes to us with a message. Don’t yank creatures from their natural habitat.

We accept that wholeheartedly. But there has to  be more to life under the sea than fish who prattle preen and play around all day long. Clearly Dory’s life is  brightened not by the script writer’s dexterity in dabbling with the sea’s mysteries. But by the sheer weightlessness of being an aqua wonder that DeGeneres  brings to the part.

Finding Dory is like finding yourself trapped in  a big fat overbaked chocolate cake where the yumminessoverwhelms the palate. Finding Nemo was a lot more  genuinely designed to invoke a sense of  sadness for what civilization has done to the ocean. Finding Dory just makes us sorry to see the fish behaving like characters  inFriends without the sex or even the sense of mischief.

Joie de vivre, there is in plenty. But where is the raison d’etre?It’s not Hank who has lost a limb in Finding Dory.