It's time to go find Dory, in this cleverly titled sequel to PIXAR's Finding Nemo.

I'm in no way attached to Finding Nemo. I grew up with Ghostbusters, Goonies, and Breakfast Club. I literally give zero fucks if Nemo gets eaten by a shark or not. But, I do understand Nemo is a heartwarming story of a father's journey to find his lost son. But, I'm not a heartless bastard. I do like the ganja smokin' turtle, Crush, and I'm glad he makes an appearance in Finding Dory.

Now, Finding Dory might be lighthearted fun, but it does have an important message. I know a lot of my audience sometimes feels fuckin' blue. Life might seem unfair. You're going through…

Well! I'll be damned!

Here I was thinking that I just growing out of Pixar, since I've been left with nothing but disappointment in their last few efforts ("Inside Out", "The Good Dinosaur", etc) and what with the very idea of a follow up to one of my favorite films of all time was already a tip off to lack of creative ideas under the hood.

Yet for a film that practically has no real reason to exist, "Finding Dory" is not just probably my biggest surprise of the year, it might be my favorite effort from the studio in recent memory (no pun intended), with a surprising amount of thematic depth and character weight to keep it above the…

Why oh why did we receive a Cars sequel before a follow-up to Finding Nemo? What could have possibly gone through Pixar's collective heads that made them sincerely believe that a sequel centered on a hillbilly tow truck would be demanded by audiences sooner than a continuation of arguably one of their most beautiful films? I guess I don't mind so much that Pixar has been trending lately by creating sequels to their original films instead of creating all-new original stories (with obvious exceptions), but they really should be careful so as not to make them nostalgia-focused cash grabs and actually memorable sequels. I had some fears that Finding Dory would simply be a rehash of the first film, and…

“Sigourney Weaver is going to help us!”

As if the existence of Finding Dory wasn’t already questionable from an audience standpoint, the film itself seems quite middled about it, backwards-constructing a reason for this title and tying on to Finding Nemo as if it’s trying to excuse its mere existence. Really, there’s basically sequences here which feels lifted straight from the first film but with another aquatic animal in place and the pace speeds through impressive setpieces without really diving down into its main character.

With all my gripes, Finding Dory isn’t a bad film; it has tremendously fun side-characters, a superb animation and the pace and action-comedy is solid enough to probably be loved by any future children. Yet…