Finding Dory is truly a delight. It’s great to see Pixar continuing their track of high quality animated family films again. All the trademarks of a quality Pixar classic are there; gorgeous animation, creative environments, multi-dimensional characters, and real emotion ringed out through a simple story. I doubt that Finding Dory will go down as one of Pixar’s best but, I will understand if it does because, there’s something special about its existence that can’t be ignored. The original film, Finding Nemo, is already a hailed as a classic so when a sequel was announced it makes sense that an iffy feeling would arise from that news, let alone from the fact that it’s centered around Dory, the comedic side character. Nemo being the open-and-closed film that it is, it would probably seem that a continuation of the story, not mention being centered around Dory of all characters and being made over a decade later, doesn’t really have any reason to exist. Even if the movie turned out to be good or better than we thought, (which it did, thank goodness) it would still have a hard time justifying the fact that it’s a real thing. Well, after seeing the movie, not only does it prove that it deserves to exist but it’s also a movie that NEEDED to be made. Yes, Finding Dory is a movie that, retroactively, was necessary to make.
When looking back at Finding Nemo, there were actually a lot of details about Dory that were simply brushed off most of the time. Her motto being “just keep swimming” which is expressed in song, her ability to speak whale and knowledge of their eating habits, suffering from short-term memory loss, even her brief mention of not knowing where her family is, all of which play a bigger and very important part in this movie. These were all minor details when compared to the entire picture of Finding Nemo, and Pixar took the risk of taking all these details and giving them their own movie, which, thanks to their expertise, was a risk that paid off remarkably well. Let’s look at the last two times Pixar tried to make a sequel, Cars 2 and Monsters University. On the surface, Finding Dory looked like it was making the same mistake Cars 2 did, give the good-hearted, simple-minded, comic relief, unexpected best friend character, played by a southern comedian, a starring role in their own movie (I know Daniel Whitney is from Nebraska but his character Larry the Cable Guy is based on southern U.S.A.). However, unlike Cars 2, Finding Dory, maintains its focus on the character and gives her a strong arc which requires her to overcome personal hardships and grow in personality and maturity, and that arc comes from recalling details from the previous movie and expanding on them. Monsters University was approached as a back story to how Mike and Sully became friends and came to work for Monsters, Incorporated. While this was an idea that still had potential, it ended up being squandered by being a tribute to classic 80’s college movies, and most of the elements of the first movie were either ignored or sort of betrayed. Finding Dory is the miraculous result of defying the weaknesses Cars 2 had by giving it the strengths that Monsters University should’ve had. Even the Toy Story sequels didn’t focus much on the details of the first film that came before them, they were each different takes on the idea of Toys coming to life, essentially telling three different stories with the same characters. Finding Dory does both a different story with the same characters and adds to the details of the previous film, and details that weren’t even that focused on to begin with. That’s impressive.
The question remains, out of all the characters from Finding Nemo to center a sequel around, why Dory? What was the reason for putting all the much appreciated effort for a supposedly unneeded sequel, and have it be about Dory? Well, this is where the unexpected necessity of the movie comes in. The reason why this movie needed to be made was to make Dory a better character than she was in the first movie. Don’t get me wrong, Dory was already a great character in Nemo, she was great comic relief and a necessary companion to not only help Marlin find his son but also to help him learn his lesson. It’s an undeniable fact, that even Marlin himself says, that he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did without Dory’s help. The only real weakness of her character was her short-term memory loss. It was added to her character to get some laughs from the audience but it didn’t really play a major part to the themes and emotion of the movie, it was mostly just a tacked on quirk for the sake of comedy. Nowadays, playing a mental deficiency as a joke would be swiftly condemned but, even back then it wasn’t that bad. Compare it to another movie that played a mental disorder for laughs that came out the same year, Gigli. One of the many, many, MANY, major flaws of Gigli was the comic relief side character with a mental disorder was portrayed as offensively as possible. Brian was an incompetent, inappropriate, cringe-inducingly stupid character who was meant to be laughed at by the audience. At the same time, Brian had an arc of desperately finding something he always wanted and when he finally does we are supposed to have a warm feeling in our hearts, even though we were also not supposed to have sympathy for him and laugh at him for being such a moron. Dory was nowhere near as offensive as Brian; at first, we laughed at her for her short-term memory loss, but as she stuck around and kept getting more helpful to Marlin she was a real character and we started laughing with her instead. Eventually, her STML, became part of her personal arc and she started getting better thanks to her companionship with Marlin, even adding to the drama. However, the STML easily could’ve been replaced with just being lonely or something and nothing much would change, and it wasn’t even an important part of Nemo as a whole. So, while the mental illness wasn’t exactly offensively portrayed, it was still a rather weak part of the movie from a certain point-of-view, even kind of dated.
With louder calls for equality nowadays, it only makes sense that mental disabilities be portrayed fairly in the media as well. Finding Dory was a movie that realized what time it was in, looked back at its predecessor and said “We can do a better job with her.” Again, there was nothing truly “wrong” with Dory’s character, but she had room for growth, and this movie provided just the growth she needed. Her STML is still played for laughs every now and then, and we are still meant to laugh with her, but, just as much if not more so, it’s now also played for drama. The disposable arc of her overcoming her mental disability in the first movie is now front and center in this movie and they did a wonderful job at improving its portrayal. From her relationship with her parents and the friends she made all her life, the movie shows the deep truth that any mental disability can be overcome with determination and care from a loving and supportive family. Remembering helpful things your loved ones say to you and playing games that teach you to recognize patterns and learn routines are real and true ways to help kids with such issues. With everything Dory learned throughout her life, including the course of this movie, she is challenged to see if she can move past her short-comings and use her skills to make it on her own. There are beats the movie takes that are similar to Nemo, but they are played in the name of helping Dory prove herself, thus they contribute to the plot and the drama twice as hard as the first, especially the traumatizing moment that almost causes her to forget everything she’s learned. This is the core of the movie, to show that even people who are mentally disabled can do anything. Dory is given a test to see if she can surpass her slightly looked-down upon reputation and be a hero, and (spoiler alert) she passes with flying colors, and a flying truck.
Isn’t it great when we get something we didn’t even know we needed? I wasn’t sure how to feel when this movie was announced, but I had a feeling that Finding Dory was going to surprise me, and it did. Pixar can still make, not just great movies but also great sequels, what a relief. I can’t say this movie is better than the original because it has some things that make more sense if you’ve seen the first movie. For me, if the sequel can stand firmly on its own without relying too much on the first one, it qualifies as a sequel that’s possibly better than the original, this one does not, but it’s still great regardless. Hopefully it will be recognized as such, hopefully this will lead to more great Pixar films, and hopefully my next post won’t be about an animated family movie.
The Number 32 