Finding Dory

Andrew Stanton’s 97 minute film sends Dory, who cannot hold a short term memory, after the parents she suddenly half recalls; the trail leads into a marine research institute on the California coast. The most consequential decision on this production concerned the ending. After Pixar executives watched the 2013 documentary Blackfish about captive orcas, the final act was rewritten: an earlier design that left the characters in a display tank was dropped and an escape to open water written in. The repair shows. The same institute must read as shelter in one scene and cage in the next, so the last half hour runs on chase momentum rather than a settled argument. The deeper issue is structural. A character who cannot narrate her own past cannot drive a scene, so Stanton hands each memory lapse to a new supporting animal: Hank the octopus, Destiny the short sighted whale shark, Bailey the beluga. Anyone who remembers the single clean line of Finding Nemo will find this markedly more episodic. Sigourney Weaver voices the institute announcements as herself. Not for you if you expect Dory to be cured: the film treats her condition as a working method, not a fault. Viewers who want one steady pair to follow will meet a new face every ten minutes.