Expectations: I was late to seeing Finding Dory because of a two week trip I took to the Great Barrier reef in Australia. The Great Barrier reef is actually where 2003's Finding Nemo took place. After being there and finding out that Dory's adventure brings us to northern California I was a little disappointed that her adventure would not continue in Australia. The trailer's also had me worried as the plot elements made the movie look almost the exact same as Nemo's story but this time focused on Dory. After the film's release I did begin to hear positive word of mouth and that mixed with Pixar's talent in animation left me hopeful. However, I still went into the film trepidatious because although Finding Nemo is a favorite of mine, Pixar's more recent installments such as Cars 2 have not been up to par and even the acclaimed Inside Out does not rank amongst the best of Pixar in my opinion.

Review: Pixar's latest installment does not surpass 2003's Finding Nemo but comes very close and manages to take on a personality of its own that separates itself from its wildly successful predecessor. The film gets most aspects right. Dory's tale of searching for her parents is a very emotional story, combining feelings of happiness and sadness with lovable characters and plenty of humor. One of the best running gags of the film is the sea otters which serve a similar role to the seagulls in Finding Nemo. The thing I really liked about the movie was it felt familiar but it also set itself enough apart from Nemo's journey to feel like it can stand on its own. The structure of the story is very similar to Finding Nemo. This time Dory is trying to find her parents and like Nemo who finds himself in a dentist office, she finds herself in an aquarium park with human spectators. However, sequences such as the truck scene at the end in which Hank the octopus takes the wheel are fresh and unique. It is also very nice to see more of Nemo in this movie because although you saw him in the first film, it had a heavy focus on Marlin and Dory. I think my favorite part of the movie was Ed O'Neill's Hank. After recently being in Australia and being lectured on the remarkable intelligence and characteristics of an octopus, I really appreciated his character and how the writers handled him. Our snorkeling guide had told us about how an octopus can camouflage so effectively and even told us of a lab whose octopus would actually crawl out of its aquarium at night and travel to other areas of the room to snatch fish for a source of food. The lab technicians had no idea what was causing all the disappearing fish and when they went to check the security tapes, they saw that the culprit was the octopus. In Finding Dory Hank is constantly camouflaging, outsmarting humans, and crawling from cage to cage. After learning more about the fish, I really admired and was reminded of the fact that Pixar really pays attention to detail and dedicates itself to researching the subjects it chooses to write about. Overall, Finding Dory is not an earth shattering classic but it leaves you feeling extremely happy and uplifted and for that I give it a 3/4.

Films like Finding Dory: Any Pixar film(especially Finding Nemo)