It's No Nemo, but Dory Still Makes a Splash

A flashback to her childhood sends Dory—a blue tang suffering from memory loss—fishing for her family in Finding Dory—Pixar's much-anticipated sequel to 2003's Finding Nemo. Despite its threat to real-life fish, critics argue it was worth the wait. Here's what they're saying.

• The film is "mesmerizingly beautiful" and includes "one of Pixar Animation's greatest creations ever"—an octopus voiced by Ed O'Neill, writes Lou Lumenick at the New York Post. But the star is Ellen DeGeneres, whose voice performance "even surpasses Robin Williams in Aladdin." She "not only deploys sharp comic timing but executes a deep, poignant dive into issues of loss that will bring tears to your eyes."
• Ann Hornaday says the film isn't quite the "masterwork" that is Finding Nemo. It "feels both like a retread of the earlier film and, inevitably, less novel and surprising," she writes at the Washington Post. But "in deciding not to stray far from the first film in plot or tone, it makes for a pleasant, familiar, cheerfully unassuming fish-in-her-water tale." Hornaday recommends seeing the cheaper, 2D version.

• For a little less than two hours, you can "believe that evil and cruelty don't necessarily have to exist in the world" as DeGeneres voices Dory "as though she's giving a giant bear hug to the world," writes Andrew Lapin at NPR. But "by narrowing the focus to one character in one limited setting, Dory has, shall we say, forgotten a crucial element of the first film's magic."
• Kate Taylor disagrees. Here is "more evidence, after last year's highly original Inside Out, that Pixar has finally emerged from the uninspiring years of the Cars franchise," she writes at the Globe and Mail. It's a "sunny children's movie," yet the "tangential, fragmented nature of [Dory's] existence can give an adult pause. And that is just one part of the genius that is Finding Dory."

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