FINDING DORY

2015 was a hit (Inside Out) and miss (The Good Dinosaur) year for Pixar’s original content, so the studio is back on safe ground with this sequel to the 2003 smash hit, Finding Nemo. Until Frozen came along, Finding Nemo spent a very long time as Disney’s biggest selling title in the home video market. It’s impossible to say how many kids have been kept quiet with an endless loop of those DVDs, but the Nemo generation are now old enough to buy their own tickets, and the nostalgia factor should bring a significant number of them back.

Returning writer/director Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, John Carter) has turned in a perfectly acceptable follow-up with an unimaginative, rudimentary story. Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) the forgetful blue tang starts remembering flashbacks of the parents she left behind. So she takes off on a journey across the ocean with Marlin (Albert Brooks reprising his role) and Nemo (Hayden Rolence taking over from Alexander Gould – because animated fish don’t go through puberty) to find her home.

For the most part Finding Dory chugs along in safe mode, and takes a long time to hit its stride. Some Sigourney Weaver and Nat King Cole jokes raise the odd laugh along the way, but the originality kicks up a gear the closer we come to the climax. At one point it looks like Stanton might address some weighty issues on loss and grief à la Bambi (1942), but he bottles it in favour of a flat, conservative outcome.

Sloane Murray is impossibly adorable as the young Dory, but the cuteness factor takes a nosedive when DeGeneres takes over. Idris Elba shows up as a sea lion, for no other apparent reason than to add to his impressive animal voiceover resumé. Of the new characters, Ed O’Neill’s cranky, seven-legged octopus gets the biggest laughs. If you’ve ever wanted to see an octopus driving a truck guided by a fish, prepare to be dazzled.

Finding Dory is fine, but it’s no classic.