tek's rating:

Finding Dory (PG)
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This came out in 2016, thirteen years after Finding Nemo, to which it is a sequel. I actually got to see it in a theater (thanks to my cousin Josh), less than a week after it was released (and just a few days after I first saw "Nemo"). The feature was preceded by a very cute short film called Piper.

The movie begins when Dory is a very young fish, with her parents (voiced by Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy) doing all they can to help her memorize things she'll need to remember in order to stay safe. But somehow, she ends up getting lost, and there's a montage of her looking for someone to help her find her parents, until finally she forgets what it was she was looking for. The montage concludes with the scene of her meeting Marlin in the first movie, then the story flashes forward to a year after that movie. Dory begins having fragmented memories of her childhood, which prompts her to journey to Morro Bay, California, where she believes she's from. She's accompanied on this journey by Marlin and Nemo. Unlike the first movie, it doesn't take long at all to reach their destination. However, Dory is immediately captured by humans who work for the Marine Life Institute, and tagged for transport to an aquarium in Cleveland. She then meets an octopus named Hank (Ed O'Neill), who wants her tag, so he can go to Cleveland, rather than being released into the ocean. In exchange, he agrees to help her find her parents. Dory also ends up being reunited with a childhood friend named Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark. Destiny and a beluga named Bailey (Ty Burrell) also provide some help in her search for her parents. Meanwhile, Marlin and Nemo try to find Dory. They receive some help from a pair of sea lions and a loon. And throughout the movie, Dory continues to have flashbacks to her childhood.

Beyond that, I don't want to reveal any more details of the plot, except to say there is a happy ending. And of course there's a lot of humor, and a lot of drama, and a few unexpected twists along the way to the happy ending. I also wanted to mention that the title doesn't so much refer to Marlin and Nemo trying to find Dory, as it does to Dory finding her roots as well as self-confidence. And... I'm sure there were other things I wanted to say, which I've now forgotten. In any event, it's a great movie. I've rated it slightly lower than the first one, though I'm not quite sure that's fair. In some ways, the sequel might even be a bit better than the original. (I'm not sure how I would have felt about this movie if I'd seen the first one when it came out, 13 years ago, instead of a few days before the sequel.) So, whatever, each movie is about equally as good as the other. Oh, and I learned from Wikipedia that there was a post-credits scene, which I didn't see. Because when I go to the theater with anyone else, I usually don't sit through the credits, as I'd do if I were alone. So it's a shame I didn't see that, but I reckon I'll get the movie on DVD someday, and watch the scene then.


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