Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, suddenly begins remembering glimpses of her past and the parents she left behind in California, setting her off on a quest to be reunited with them. The voice acting, headlined by DeGeneres and Brooks (with supporting performances by the likes of Keaton, Levy, O’Neill, Idris Elba and Dominic West), is top-notch.
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The first two Toy Story movies both have ideal scores.
The movie should really have been called “Finding Dory’s Family”, as the bulk of the film takes Dory and her clownfish friends, Nemo (Hayden Rolence) and Marlin (Albert Brooks) across the sea to look for her family. After consecutive years of sequels (2013’s Toy Story 3 and 2014’s Monsters University), the animation studio released two original films in the same year – scoring an undeniable high with the emotional Inside Out, but stumbling with the decent but rather unspectacular The Good Dinosaur. Dory has always suffered from short-term memory loss – it’s what has endeared and frustrated those close to her. But this sequel to “Finding Nemo” (2003) is an enchanting animated adventure that makes terrific use of its vocal talent – particularly DeGeneres, who lends poignancy to Dory’s exploits. So, I don’t know! This time around they strike the flawless sentiments from inside you. the great Loss, the fore-sake love of your family, cherishing your gifted friends, these are some of the great lessons, but can easily be soggy if gets too much and especially in a kids movie. I mean, it’s not exactly Wild Strawberries, but we’re talking about a mentally deficient fish who knows she’s forgotten her entire family, you know? As Marlin and Nemo search for their friend, they stop trying to think their way and ask themselves, “What would Dory do?” “I heard your voice”.
The characters all have their own struggles. When I went to the screening I was surrounded by children of all ages.
Ellen DeGeneres: I just do what I do and I obviously hope that people are going to laugh and be touched by whatever I do.
What happened was, they sent me a script with scenes from the first movie, “Finding Nemo”, and that was pretty easy at least because I was able to watch the movie again and do my lines. “I love that kind of comedy where the audience is on this roller coaster ride from comedy to deep emotion”.
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“Googling beluga whales turned out to be a fool’s errand because as soon as I got into the recording studio they were very nice about whatever little research I had done and were like “we just want you to try to be funny”, he said.
