Oh, Pixar. How do you disappoint me? Let me count the ways.
Actually, there’s only one: The money grab.
When you make movies like Monsters University and Cars 2 it is obvious that little effort was put in and you know that hundreds of millions will flood in through the doors that Walt built. No one was drooling for a Sully/Mike origin story or a travelogue featuring Mater stumbling around Japan and Italy. You have got to know this.
And look, I get it. You need to sustain. Pay the artists. Maintain the Scrooge McDuck-style piles of gold coins found under the Burbank studio that Walt built. But it should be noted that Walt never produced one single sequel in his thirty years of movie making. Sure he pilfered every idea from some other source material BUT he only went to that watering hole once, told the story, and moved on.
So let’s move on and speak briefly about the newest Pointless Pixar Redundancy; Finding Dory. There simply is not near enough to constitute a movie. To constitute the hundreds of people spending 3 years and 200 million dollars to tell this story. Finding Dory plays like a quaint T.V. Episode or a direct-to-stream movie. It’s nice to see all your old friends but they sure don’t have much to do.
Here’s the fatal flaw: Finding Nemo was about overcoming limitations, not excepting boundaries and letting your children go and live their own life. Nice themes paired with some thoughtful adventure and comedy. Finding Dory is about…. Um… Dory finding her parents. And she has a memory loss problem, in case you forgot. You will be reminded as she and those around her tells you this throughout the entire film. That really is it. Dory remembers she forgot where she came from and then remembers little bits and pieces [in chronological order, of course] while forgetting what she is doing or where she is just to remember again. Tedious.
Of course the kids will more likely be entertained and happy to see their friends again. Some new characters are introduced and you’ll find some funny bits. Thing is there is truly no reason for this installment and Pixar is better than this. After 2015 gave us Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur it’s a little heartbreaking to see them go backwards again.
And, of course, it looks like they will continue to forget how to come up with an original thought.
Sucks.
