KEEP…SWIMMING…KEEP…SWIMMING…!

So two Tuesdays ago, the 28th of June, I was visiting my mother's parents in Michigan. Guess what movie we decided to see?

That night I immediately put my thoughts up on Tumblr, and I'm frustrated it took me this long to get around to mentioning on a the site I've frequented even more.

I would say this is only slightly ‘below’ Finding Nemo. Rotten Tomatoes sums it up pretty well: 95% compared to 99%. But this is definitely Pixar back in stride, and moving forward. That’s right, prepare your eye plumbing.

What really makes this a truly new movie, and not just a sequel or continuation, is also what might make this seem less exciting than Finding Nemo. There isn’t a visible axe hanging over anyone’s head, like when Nemo was set to be given to the horribly irresponsible, ill-prepared owner. Marlin and Dory swimming through dark trenches and huge open ocean also felt inherently more menacing than an aquarium densely stocked with human and animal characters. I’ve no idea if there would have been a more foreboding atmosphere if the location had remained in the original stand-in for Sea World, before Blackfish changed some people's opinions of animals being hurt in captivity.

The core is Dory in one of the most interesting “versus self” stories in film I’ve ever seen in my long, wizened experience of 22 years. She’s combating her innate leaky memory, and her conscious self-image. As perturbing as the latter is normally, it’s made even more vexing by the former. It’s also seamlessly set-up as a life long struggle, thanks to the simultaneously warm and wrenching flashbacks to Dory’s childhood (Fryhood? Fingerlinghood? I dunno). The conflict is Dory struggling to convince people, including the audience, but mostly herself, thats she’s capable of living as an independent adult. So a good portion of people I've encountered online, particularly on Tumblr, owes it to themselves to see this movie.