For the past several days I’ve been trying to write a review of Finding Dory (2016), the long-awaited sequel to the Disney classic Finding Nemo (2003) and have been failing. What’s bugging me the most is this: three quarters of the way through this visually excellent movie I found myself thinking …
My God! These fish have stereoscopic vision!
As if this is important in an animated movie about sentient sea-life.
Yet here’s a picture of Dory’s real world counterpart, a regal tang. It might have limited stereoscopic vision, or more accurately binocular vision1.
So the real point is that I was not captivated by this movie. This is despite the usual high Disney standards in animation and voice talent; there’s little to fault in these areas. I believe there are two problems with this movie.
First, and unavoidable, is the lack of novelty. We’ve been here before, we know the feel and the rules of the place. Indeed, we’ve lost the sharks, who certainly added a lot to the first movie through the injection of human concepts into the fish-realm, and how sometimes human concepts are either ridiculous or, more rarely, transcendent. And in terms of the landscape and the supporting characters, little is added.
Second, the story does not really result in growth for any of the characters. In Finding Nemo, both little Nemo and his father, Marlin, learn and grow emotionally during the movie. I don’t see the same happening in Finding Dory. As a fish with short term memory loss, Dory has a hard time learning anything; the best that can really be said is that her recall of important facts are beneficial, that we really shouldn’t forget. As a lesson, it’s not really forceful.
There are other characters, of course, such as Hank the octopus, but while an argument can be made that each faces a challenge and overcomes it, none of them are nearly so compelling as those of the first film.
For me, at least, out of context this is a fine movie; but in the context of its predecessor, it suffers. It simply is not as captivating.
1It’s also bugging me that I can’t find an antonym for binocular vision. Oh, now that I have the right term it’s obvious: monocular vision.
