'Dory' frolics in the kiddie pool

Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) and Hank (Ed O'Neill) in Finding Dory. Image courtesy Pixar.

The simplest way to evaluate a Pixar film is to see if it has at least one moment that breaks your heart asunder. Pixar as a studio is reliable enough to produce consistently entertaining films (a Cars or two aside), but the great ones it creates possess an emotional heft that cuts right into the soul resulting in uncontrollable weeping. It serves as a dividing line between the studio's best films – Toy Story series, Wall-E, Up, Finding Nemo and last year's tremendous Inside Out – and the still wicked to very good but not quite as emotionally charged movies like The Incredibles, Brave, Ratatouille, and A Bug's Life. There are a couple of moments in which Finding Dory flirts with the hurting, coming ever so close to breaking down the audience but never quite reaching its main objective. As a film, and pardon the pun,  Finding Dory stays much closer to the surface than its indelible predecessor; a lighter, simpler quest befitting the titular fish, Dory (voiced again by Ellen DeGeneres). The logic of the decision makes sense, yet the result is a less than stellar follow-up, a good enough film that can't come close to living up to the majesty of Finding Nemo.

Good enough feels a little mean of a descriptor for Finding Dory, which has a fair number of positives working in its favor. It retains much of the original's visual splendor and creates an incredible undersea world the audience can still get lost in. The film is also quite funny, especially a frantic slow-motion scene toward the end and a recurring gag concerning a very famous science fiction actress. For all intents and purposes, Finding Dory is a quality piece of children's entertainment that will keep the kids focused for almost two hours (including the short film in the beginning).

And yet the expectations for a Pixar film are much higher than the average animated flick, giving poor Finding Dory a precedent it isn't designed to meet. This is the safer version of Finding Nemo in which the characters aren't chased by a relapsing shark (there's a squid, but it's not the same) or swallowed by a whale or have to fake death to escape (just mild illness). Even the locale changes, moving out of the ocean and into a marine life institute with a heavier human presence than the original. Dory, Marlin (an underused Albert Brooks), and Nemo (Hayden Rolence) never face an insurmountable or even life threatening challenge beyond the aforementioned squid; it's as if the filmmakers, including franchise director Andrew Stanton, wanted to take the sting away and have a pleasant and nice film. Pleasant and nice is a very fine thing to aim for if you want to earn a profit; it's a terrible strategy for creating art.

The lightness of being is a little odd given the film’s rather bold and interesting premise, in which Dory searches through her scattered memory for her parents (Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy) she lost years ago. That's a hell of a premise to work from with the potential to ask questions about identity, family, and even the trustworthiness of memory in the first place; even the title hints at a rather solid self-examination of the soul. Finding Dory doesn't fall into the philosophical premise it sets up for itself; rather, it seems happier to peek into the abyss than to dive right into the moral ambiguity its presence sets up. What viewers get instead is a few new characters to know, like cantankerous octopus Hank (Ed O'Neill) who effectively replaces Marlin for much of the film, along with a pair of helpful whales (Kaitlin Olson and Ty Burrell) who are a bit fun to have around but lack distinction and their own agency. This isn't a situation like in the first film in which the secondary characters work along with some combination of Nemo, Marlin and Dory to attain their end goal. Instead, the side characters either barter for their objectives our assist for the sake of helping. They're used less as characters and more as plot points.

This is all a very long way of saying Finding Dory is missing the heart, charm and curiosity that defined Finding Nemo. It doesn't have the courage to invest in its characters at the same level and make audiences truly feel for their fates and hope they escape their quasi-imprisonment. Most troublesome is this film won't break you down and rip the soul out of your heart like it should; it's more content to offer an unenthusiastic friendly hug.

Review: Three and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 97 minute

Genre: Animated

Ask Away

Target audience: Families and people who have Pixar devotees.

Take the whole family?: This one's even tamer than the original, so feel free to take even the youngest kids along with you.

Theater or Netflix?: Even if the film itself isn't great, the animation is, as always, superb. That's enough in my book to warrant a theater trip, although don't pay for the 3D unless you go to a matinee screening.

How's the short film?: Pretty freaking adorable. Called Piper, the short focuses on a young sandpiper learning to fetch its own food with rather calamitous results. While it lacks the depth of last year's Sanjay's Super Team, Piper is a fun, cute little prelude to the main feature.

Watch this as well?: As if you won't buy, rent or dig out your copy of Finding Nemo and watch it again. Remember, fish are friends, not food.