Movies You Want To Love But Don't

[Old Thunder]

Finding Dory.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like this movie, I really, really do. When I found out most of the movie took place at an aquarium, I was a little worried. But, surprisingly, it ended up being really creative, suspenseful in the right moments and very funny. It was everything you'd expect from a Pixar film. It was all going great for me until about 20 minutes before the end. The last twenty minutes or so were just way too ridiculous and over the top for me, between an octopus driving and the whole car chase and then the climax when all those fish ended up being freed back into the water, with the slow-mo and Lois Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" playing in the background. It's very hard to describe but, that was really the jumping the shark moment for me (yes, pun intended). It just completely didn't feel like it went with the spirit of Pixar at all. Sure, they're movies often have really big finales, but this one just felt like the writers gave up and just didn't have time to rewrite it. It honestly didn't fit that well with the rest of the movie and it just seemed more like something you would see in a mediocre Dreamworks flick. Not to mention, certain other parts I think,were a little boring and I think the movie was a little too long. And like I said, I don't dislike the rest of the movie, but the ending kind of just hinders the way I see the film as a whole.

So I just saw the film on the plane to Germany. Personally, this movie came across to me as one of those bad Disney sequels, which personally I love and sometimes prefer over the original films themselves. Finding Dory was a fun moving, maybe a little too crazy and fast-paced for its own good but fun nonetheless. Whereas Finding Nemo was something of a grander-scale epic almost, Finding Dory was a smaller-scale reunion that wasn't as good as the first one but fun nonetheless.