Finding Dory | Film review -

Finding Dory Ellen Degeneres — (Image credit: Pixar)

Ellen DeGeneres’s scatty blue tang Dory makes an endearingly funny heroine of Finding Dory, a highly enjoyable sequel to Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated movie 2003 Finding Nemo. In an echo of the first film, she’s on a quest to find her missing parents, a venture made all the more daunting, of course, by her short-term memory loss but one which she tackles with intuitive daring and bumbling pluck.

Headstrong young clown fish Nemo (Hayden Rolence) and his neurotic dad (Albert Brooks), Dory’s former companions, help her on her way, but when she ends up stranded alone inside a California marine park, it is shape-shifting octopus Hank (Ed O’Neill) who comes to her aid. (She, however, calls him a ‘septopus’ as he is missing a limb.)

By Pixar’s elevated standards, Finding Dory doesn’t raise the animation bar to a dizzying new height, but it does introduce us to some engaging new characters – including a hopelessly myopic whale shark (Kaitlin Olson) and a pair of cockney sea lions amusingly voiced by Idris Elba and Dominic West. The gags are consistently good, too.

Certificate U. Runtime 97 mins. Directors Angus MacLean, Andrew Stanton

Finding Dory is available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download from Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JNLwlcPBPI

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.