Find That Dory!

Being the mature and worldly student that I am, my friend and I went to go see "Finding Dory" on Thursday when it came out. It was a bit like a return to our childhood, since we grew up loving "Finding Nemo" and it was finally getting a deserving sequel (enough with the "Cars" spin offs please).

Needless to say we loved it.

The cuteness started with the Pixar short, which admittedly are always cute. "Piper" is a short about a little baby piper on the beach trying to learn how to eat when waves keep coming. It's adorable. And the animation is incredible, the feathers on the bird look amazing! The music as well was stellar, which is crucial since there is very little talking in shorts.

The movie right off the bat was emotional, paraphrasing Dory's life before the events of "Finding Nemo" as she loses her parents and searches the ocean for them. This is made difficult by the fact that she can't remember what she was looking for. Eventually Dory remembers a little bit of where she comes from in the middle of Mr. Ray's class, and insists on dragging Marlin and an enthusiastic Nemo across the ocean to find her parents.

There are plenty of new and old characters in the film, Crush the sea turtle from "Finding Nemo" makes an appearance, and stick around after the film to get a glimpse of the tank gang from the dentist's and their adventures. Marlin takes a more backseat role this time and mostly functions as the voice of wisdom, but it's nice to see Nemo interact with him a little more during the adventure. The cast of new characters includes an octopus, a nearsighted whale shark, and a beluga that can't use echolocation. All of them are charming and quirky in their own way.

Other elements from the first movie are also used, such as the infamous "just keep swimming" song and the fact that Dory can speak whale. It's charming to see more of Dory's backstory and fun to spot the connections between the movies.

It's a very empowering film for neuro-atypical people, since the gang involves Dory, who has short-term memory loss, as the leading lady and various others with some kind of disability. Of course it all works out adorably in the end, with plenty of giggles along the way.

It was a wonderful movie, and would highly recommend for both kids and adults. I wouldn't say that it was better than the first one, but it certainly does not fall far short of it either.