Pixar Pint #17: Finding Dory
How to make a worse version of a beloved classic
Welcome back to Pixar Pints, our summer-long journey through all 26 Pixar films in release order.
This is the one where it felt like they stopped trying. For years, previous additions to established Pixar franchises had been accused of being nothing but cash cows, but these criticisms were largely ignored because the movies themselves were still good. Not here. Finding Dory is a blatant attempt to recapture the magic of its predecessor, Finding Nemo, without doing much of anything to expand upon it. If a different studio released this movie, it would be considered a straight ripoff of Finding Nemo. It is the definition of a money grab. How much money did it grab?
$1.029 billion. That’s a lot of money! When Finding Dory was released in 2016, it was the fourth-highest-grossing animated film of all time! But remember: Finding Nemo grossed a little over $940 million all the way back in 2003. Adjust that for inflation and you get $1.227 billion in 2016 dollars. So Finding Dory performed worse not only critically, but also monetarily.
Let’s get into it.
Finding Dory quick facts
Release date: June 17, 2016 | Director: Andrew Stanton | Music: Thomas Newman
Starring: Ellen DeGeneres (Dory), Albert Brooks (Marlin), Hayden Rolence (Nemo), Ed O’Neill (Hank), Kaitlin Olson (Destiny), Ty Burrell (Bailey), Diane Keaton (Jenny), Eugene Levy (Charlie)
John Ratzenberger as: Bill, the husband crab
Budget: $200 million | Box office: $1.029 billion
Academy Awards: None
Eli
This is the first time I'd seen this movie.
Aesthetic: 4/10 | Finding Nemo did the most with the least, making what should have been relatively same-looking open water sets seem dynamic and distinct; it's probably that film's biggest strength. Finding Dory does something close to the opposite, taking place mostly within one closed environment and having most of the movie look the same, a terrible creative decision that completely kills any sense of adventure. The new character designs in this movie are (mostly) good.
Animation: 8/10 | It's so frustrating watching this movie because if there's any classic Pixar aesthetic I would have loved to see remastered in modern Pixar animation, it's Finding Nemo's. But they didn't do that. The animation is good - it's pretty impossible for Pixar to miss at this point - I'm just left wishing we got more than we did.
Story: 0/10 | Who wanted this? Finding Nemo was a complete story and did not need a part two. Like Marlin says near the beginning, traveling the ocean once is enough adventure for a lifetime. Marlin, Nemo, and Dory all learned their lessons and got to live happily ever after...it should have ended there. Instead, we get a totally contrived "adventure" that not only fails on its own, but also retroactively hurts Finding Nemo because Dory and especially Marlin basically just rehash the same arcs they did in the first movie. Not only that, but man, I do not like the way disability is portrayed in this movie at all. Monsters University did a great job of teaching its audience to live with disabilities and poor natural circumstances, but Finding Dory goes all the way to the other side of the aisle and botches the perception of disabilities in like three different ways. 1) Dory's disability basically makes her a secret supergenius. Like, that is the entire point of this movie, and it results in a lot of BS deus ex machina getting her out of tough situations. 2) When we meet the whales, Destiny and Bailey, Destiny tells Dory that Bailey is faking a disability, and the plot requires that Bailey's disability be resolved, so it's implied that he was indeed faking it and that he "just wasn't believing in himself" hard enough, which...gross! 3) The sea lions spend the entire movie making fun of Gerald, a caricature of someone with developmental issues, for no reason.1
Characters: 4/10 | Loses points because, again, Marlin and Dory learn the same lessons they did in the first film. Loses more points because the writers didn't know how to make Nemo wise without making him precocious. Loses even more points for the mere existence of the sea lions. Gets a couple points back because Hank is pretty cool.
Acting: 9/10 | Great performances all around. I think I could have done with less whale speak, but that's not the actors' faults. Albert Brooks sounds like his own person this time and not like Tom Hanks 2.0 (like he did in the first film), so hats off to him.
Music: 6/10 | Tries to capture the magic of the Finding Nemo score and largely fails, but I think it's mostly because the movie itself is a little confused about what it wants to be and, thus, there didn't appear to be much of a true direction for this score to expand on the first one.
Final score: 5/10 | Maybe I'm being too harsh on this film, but man, most of the time I spent watching it was spent thinking, "wow, y'all sure did this better 13 years ago". This movie on its own is passable. Like, it's fine. But it doesn't expand upon Finding Nemo at all and, in some ways, even takes away from it. I just really hate that this is the direction Pixar went with this movie. Completely pointless film; it screams "cash grab". I would have rather had a spinoff that expanded on whatever became of the tank gang (all we get is a tacked-on end credits scene).
Leah
Aesthetic: 7/10 | It looks fine, but it wasn't as creative as Finding Nemo. I liked the colors and variety of the Open Ocean exhibit. I appreciate how they made a fish look like a middle aged man.
Animation: 9/10 | Pixar consistently puts out high quality animation.
Story: 6/10 | This story concept would have been better if it wasn't a Finding Nemo sequel. I had fun watching this movie, but a lot of it was a rehash from the original. It was sweet, but did it really add anything? It didn't build on the original or say anything new. It also veered a lot more into the absurd than the original, which felt odd as a follow-up. The moral of this movie seems opposite Monsters University; here, Dory is told that she can do anything despite her disability, and is able to overcome her problems through the power of believing in herself. I didn't really like the way this movie treated disability in general. Gerald seemed like an ableist caricature, Dory overcame her disability in a way that seemed unrealistic, and Bailey's issues were dismissed and shown to be all in his head.
Characters: 6/10 | I liked Hank the best; his character arc was new, unlike most of the other characters in this movie. It was nice to see Nemo, Marlin, and Dory again, but this movie didn't really do anything new with them. Seeing Marlin make the same mistakes over again was frustrating. I didn't care for the sea lions; they basically just bullied Gerald because he looked/acted different.
Acting: 8/10 | The acting was fun; I didn't have any problems with it. All the VAs brought the characters to life.
Music: 8/10 | I liked the references to the original score, because I love the original score to pieces, but it wasn't as good as the original.
Final score: 7/10 | The nostalgia factor was fun, and I liked some of the jokes, but it was worse than the original in every way. Finding Nemo was the last Pixar movie that needed a sequel. Finding Dory was fun, but didn't add anything positive. The ableist implications were also disappointing.
Maddy
Aesthetic: 6/10 | Animation: 9/10 | Story: 5/10 | Characters: 5/10 | Acting: 8/10 | Music: 7/10
Finding Dory is a fine movie. This is the first movie on the list I had yet to see in full, so I was going in blind. Here I sit feeling the same way I did when it came out back in 2016, and the way I have felt during the six years since the release of the movie.
Why?
Finding Nemo is a wonderful film filled with creativity and heart. A fun 8/10 with a lot of my childhood stuck in it. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion and a great marketing tool. Yet, none of the nostalgia that I think Pixar wanted to evoke with Finding Dory actually comes through. It’s a money-first, movie-second production at the tail end of John Lasseter’s tenure at Disney-Pixar before getting the boot because he’s a scumbag. While Disney was turning out pretty good original movies, Pixar was in the mindset of making sequels and maybe an original movie here or there because people will go out to see a sequel to a childhood classic, especially if they have their own children now.
The product itself doesn’t hold up to the films that made Pixar a household name; among animation firms, Pixar could easily be considered in a lower tier with Sony and Dreamworks if not for those first five movies being such iconic, well-rounded classics with charm and love put behind everything in them. Yet it’s now 2016 and Pixar wants money more than anything. Finding Dory is perfectly suitable for the kids of today and for their parents to remember their DVD or VHS copy of Finding Nemo that they played to death, but it just reminds me of a time when hope in Pixar was fading.
Considering this is the same year Disney released both Zootopia (a very popular and well-liked film) and Moana (in my opinion, their best movie of the 2010s), no one knew what to expect from Pixar going forward. In hindsight, we now know Pixar has slowly gotten back into shape, which makes Finding Dory such a great time capsule of where they were just half a decade ago, while also giving us a glimpse into the modern mindset change of the company, with just a few more hiccups to cross before we get to the revitalized modern Pixar of today.
Final score: 40/60 or 6/10
David
Aesthetic: Way too samey. Coming back to this years later, I think I expected to see a lot more in terms of the scope of color and design.
Animation: Finding Nemo in a modern setting could have been absolutely spectacular - and we see bits and pieces of that in other movies when they delve into water scenes, but instead, we're left with this hollow imitation. It's still Pixar - still excellent - but jeez.
Story: Why? The entire premise of this film is built on the backbone that the characters DIDN'T LEARN FROM FINDING NEMO. Stupid! Also, Dory's whole schtick got really really grating really fast.
Characters: Fuuuuuuck the goddamn sea lions dude. Holy shit. Also - what I and others have alluded to in the story section. Nobody done learned nothing.
Acting: Fine. They do what they need to do, but it lacks a little of the wonder from the first time around.
Music: Fine. So many of these scores are okay, and it's harder when some movies are truly special because it casts the rest of them in a less favorable light.
Final score: 2/10 | Man. Rough go of it. This movie takes everything that sequels shouldn't want to be and aspires to exactly that - being a faint echo of its predecessor, missing the central tenet of the original story in order to build the story here, and all in all feeling like a very cash-driven choice of film to make, trying to capitalize on nostalgia that I'm not sure was really there. The movie never needed a sequel. I wish we didn't get one.
Final notes
Do we really have to do another sequel next? C’mon.
Next up: Cars 3
Pixar’s creative team got blasted for this in particular, and it’s worth noting (I guess), that they envisioned Gerald as more of a socially awkward nerd who ends up beating the bullies in the end. I don’t really buy it; I think they just didn’t know what they were doing and failed to consult anyone who might consider it offensive, especially given how badly they botched displaying disabilities elsewhere in the film. That said, it’s at least an explanation.