Find­ing Dory

“Hi, I’m Dory. I suf­fer from short-term mem­o­ry loss.” The words that open Find­ing Dory may sound like the intro­duc­tion to an AA meet­ing, and may neat­ly recap the two most per­ti­nent facts about the iden­ti­ty of the film’s hero­ine (voiced again by Ellen DeGeneres) – but the speak­er is not the Dory that we know and love, but an adorably juve­nile ver­sion of her, from before Find­ing Nemo, in what has now late­ly become a Pixar franchise.

Andrew Stan­ton and Angus MacLane’s sequel begins with a glimpse into the regal blue tang’s child­hood, back when she had a moth­er and father (Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy) who fret­ted over the dan­gers of her con­gen­i­tal inabil­i­ty to retain mem­o­ries. A momen­tary sep­a­ra­tion from them led Dory to for­get who her par­ents were and where she lived, and to remem­ber only her­self (Dory) and her con­di­tion (short-term mem­o­ry loss) – until, hav­ing grown up wan­der­ing the seas lost and alone, she ran into a neu­rot­ic clown­fish named Mar­lin (Albert Brooks) and joined him on his quest to find his abduct­ed son Nemo (Hay­den Rolence).

If this intro­duc­to­ry sequence of events – the pre­his­to­ry to Find­ing Nemo – is now essen­tial­ly for­got­ten by Dory, it is also com­plete­ly new to us, so that when frag­ments of Dory’s mem­o­ry return in a rush, send­ing her, with Mar­lin and Nemo in (under)tow, on a transocean­ic odyssey to find her own fam­i­ly, we too share in her fuzzy nos­tal­gia for a long-lost past. Indeed, old­er view­ers may by now only half remem­ber the escapades of the orig­i­nal film (released some 13 years ago), while younger ones may, like Dory her­self, in effect be recon­struct­ing this befud­dled fish’s life sto­ry as if for the very first time.

As the ever perky Dory defies the odds to search for her par­ents out­side, inside and all around the Marine Life Insti­tute in Mor­ro Bay, Cal­i­for­nia, her adven­tures school younger mem­bers of the audi­ence in the pos­i­tive les­son that every­one has a unique set of qual­i­ties, and can get by with a lit­tle help from their friends. The recur­ring marine motif here is dis­abil­i­ty – not just antero­grade amne­sia, but Nemo’s con­spic­u­ous­ly dam­aged fin, the near-sight­ed­ness of a whale shark named Des­tiny (Kaitlin Olson), the impaired echolo­ca­tion of bel­u­ga whale Bai­ley (Ty Bur­rell), the cross-eyed con­fu­sion of com­mon loon Becky (Torbin Xan Bul­lock), and the miss­ing ten­ta­cle of Dory’s new best friend, the can­tan­ker­ous red ​‘sep­to­pus’, Hank (Ed O’Neill).

An expert in the art of cam­ou­flage and self-con­ceal­ment, Hank wants noth­ing more than to be placed per­ma­nent­ly in an aquar­i­um, hav­ing once been hurt in the open ocean. His flex­i­bil­i­ty and timid­i­ty, cou­pled with Dory’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and der­ring-do, make for a com­plex dialec­tic on the dif­fer­ent ways in which the dis­abled can inter­act with the world beyond – while, more trou­bling­ly, two oth­er­wise help­ful sea lions (voiced by Idris Elba and Dominic West) are shown casu­al­ly manip­u­lat­ing and bul­ly­ing a third (also voiced by Bul­lock) with an evi­dent intel­lec­tu­al disability.

Still, the over­all mes­sage is that, no mat­ter how small, hope­less and alone one might feel, any­thing is pos­si­ble for those who work togeth­er. Even Dory proves able to trav­el across oceans, marine parks, bridges and even free­ways in her quest to be reunit­ed with her Blue Tang Clan. The results are beau­ti­ful­ly ani­mat­ed, relent­less­ly paced, and often very fun­ny – and if you are look­ing for guid­ance through these sink-or-swim times of his­tor­i­cal amne­sia, polit­i­cal befud­dle­ment and gold­fish-bowl iso­la­tion­ism, just keep ask­ing your­self: ​“What would Dory do?”