Finding Dory

Pixar must really hate parents who hover over their kids, correcting their mistakes before the consequences hit.  Parents who want their children’s lives to be like a Disney ride, fun and safe from conflict or decision-making. 

I guess those parents are a big fucking problem. I mean, how often do you see kids with broken arms these days? When I was little, someone was always falling out of the bed of a moving pickup or doing an endo while jumping his Sting Ray over a homemade ramp. My friends and I once made a two-story go-kart, and we built a fort with other kids as structural elements. Don’t worry, they were the asshole kids.

I’m not getting nostalgic or saying things were better in the old days. Fuck no, kids have it way better today, but a lot of them also have the tradeoff of dickish parents. Moms have gotten pushier, dads have gotten more involved. And all those grownups’ failed hopes and dreams are stuffed into their kids’ Frozen backpacks from preschool on.  Kids are ordered to do more, achieve more, fail less and never get to ride their BMX bikes around abandoned construction sites. In other words, today’s parents haven’t made their kids lives any easier or safer, they’ve just moved all the risk from the streets to the living room.

Parents forget that kids are the most resilient things on earth. They can handle a shitload more failure than adults. Look at me. Sure, I’m an unemployed drunk in a basement apartment, a drain on society and a waste of food stamps. I guarantee you, though, that the morning my sisters found me unconscious on the bathroom floor with all their lipstick eaten and Lilt perm chemicals drunk that nobody expected me to be able to someday make an outdated, unattractive web site. ALL BY MYSELF!!!

I suppose Pixar is doing a noble thing with Finding Dory subtly telling parents to back the fuck off. The problem, though, is that they told parents the same thing over a decade ago with Finding Nemo, and nobody listened that time. Additionally, their parent company Disney is all about infantilizing and keeping kids in cocoons for as long as possible. So long as it’s a Disney brand cocoon.

Finding Dory picks up somewhere after Finding Nemo, an animated road trip movie about anthropomorphic tropical fish. In the original, a neurotic dad (Albert Brooks) searches for his feeble son (Hayden Rolence) who has disappeared into the big bad ocean. This time, though, it’s forgetful friend Dory (Ellen Degeneres), whom Nemo and his father help find her family. She’s all grown up, but remembers her parents and how she was torn away from them as a child. Sort of like someone pursuing a suppressed memory, except this time it’s not of a dentist fondling you.

What follows is a hell of a lot like the first movie. Cute animated fish encounter difficulties as they swim all over the ocean in search of lost family. Finding Nemo was a pretty damn good story the first time, full of dazzling scenery, charming seagulls, sharks, turtles and plot twists. This time, though, it’s the same boilerplate, just with octopus, whale shark, sea lions and otters slotted in. None of it is as fresh or unique this time.

That’s fine for kids, I suppose, who are mostly looking for cute things they can have on their bedspreads or lunch boxes. But it sort of sucks that Pixar tells parents to let children spread their wings while it’s too beholden to shareholders to do it themselves. This movie takes no risks. 

Additionally, Dory is short and episodic, lacking a compelling emotional arc. It’s more like a compilation of animals and situations piled up until they’ve reached some minimum required duration. More than in the best Pixar movies, I could see the mechanisms and strings pulled to jerk tears. Up it’s not. 

Instead of a dentist’s office there is a Monterey Bay Aquarium, but without that name. (It’s weird, they say it’s Morro Bay, which is a ways down the coast from Monterey and is famous for its massive dome-shaped rock. That rock isn’t in the movie but a huge marine research institute is, which Morro Bay doesn’t have but Monterey does. It’s like Pixar and Monterey had a tiff and Pixar took Morro to the prom just to piss off its ex.) Instead of a jaded aquarium fish, there is an octopus trying to use the hero to escape. Instead of seagulls, there are silly sea lions for comedic relief.

The movie looks amazing, though. I can only imagine the shitload of computers it took to make undulating kelp beds and sun-dappled undersea light. Pixar also does a shitload better job than anyone else at matching characters to quality voice talent. I also appreciate that Pixar mostly avoids cheap-ass pop culture jokes.

It’s still too much of the same thing, though. Think of Finding Nemo and Finding Dory as getting two slices of overpriced flourless chocolate cake at some middling chain restaurant. They look fantastic when they come out, and the first one tastes great. That’s Nemo. 

Dory is the second one. It’s made from the same ingredients as the first, but you’ve already had enough to satisfy you, so it’s not as enjoyable. Yet, you keep eating. 

Why did you get two pieces? Because it was your birthday and your mother had a coupon and you were feeling really sad about something, maybe a girl told you (correctly) that you smelled like the grease bins behind Burger King, and you had to stop crying just to eat the cake and then you got in a big fight with your dad and ran out of the Red Lobster and got hit by a car in the parking lot and everyone laughed at you and you wish your parents would have stopped you, right then and so many other times. But no, they never did and you just kept falling down...

Oh, fuck you, never mind why I ate the two pieces of cake. Just know that I liked the first one better and now I hardly ever eat cake, or talk to my parents. I just drink. And the second can of Four Loko is always better than the first, and I learned that all by myself. Three Fingers for Finding Dory.