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Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with the sequel to the 2003 smash, where Dory goes out to search for her family.

In a flashback, Dory, the regal blue tang, gets separated from her parents, Jenny and Charlie, as a child. As she grows up, Dory attempts to search for them, but gradually forgets them due to her short-term memory loss. Later, she joins Marlin the clownfish, looking for Nemo. One year after the events of the first film, Dory is living with Marlin and Nemo on their reef. One day, Dory has a flashback and remembers her parents. She decides to look for them, but her memory problem is an obstacle. She suddenly remembers that they lived at the "Jewel of Morro Bay, California" across the ocean when Nemo mentions the name. Marlin and Nemo accompany Dory on her journey. With the help of Crush, their sea turtle friend, they ride the California Current to California. Upon arrival, they explore a shipwreck full of lost cargo, where Dory accidentally awakens a giant Humboldt squid, who pursues them and almost devours Nemo. They manage to trap the squid in a large shipping container, and Marlin berates Dory for endangering them. Her feelings hurt, Dory travels to the surface to seek help where she is captured by staff members from the trio's nearby destination, the Marine Life Institute. Dory is placed in quarantine and tagged. There she meets a grouchy but well-meaning seven-legged octopus named Hank. Dory's tag marks her for transfer to an aquarium in Cleveland. Hank, who fears being released back into the ocean, agrees to help Dory find her parents in exchange for her tag. In one exhibit, Dory encounters her childhood friend Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark, who used to communicate with Dory through pipes, and Bailey, a beluga whale, who mistakenly believes he has lost his ability to echolocate. Dory subsequently has flashbacks of life with her parents, and struggles to recall details. Marlin and Nemo attempt to rescue Dory. With the help of two lazy California sea lions named Fluke and Rudder and a common loon named Becky, they manage to get into the institute and find her in the pipe system. As Dory continues her search for her parents, will she have to say goodbye to Marlin and Nemo?

Pros:
1. Dory is a great protagonist, and we get to learn l lot more about her.
2. Marlin and Nemo are both great support.
3. Hank, Destiny, Bailey, Jenny, Charlie, Fluke, and Rudder are all likeable and memorable new characters. There's also some neat cameos from Mr. Ray, Crush, and the Tank Gang.
4. Like the first film, there's plenty of well handled comedy.
5. Lots of charming and heartwarming moments.
6. Well handled amount of intensity and suspense.
7. Stellar voice acting.
8. Thomas Newman delivers a score that's just as amazing as his score from the original.
9. Like Toy Story 3 and Monsters University, the animation has received a significant upgrade from it's predecessor, and just like it, it really captures the feel of the underwater world with great character designs, backgrounds, and effects.
10. Great chemistry and development between the characters.
11. The story is very well written, and has a great moral regarding people with disabilities.

Cons:
1. Some plot points are rehashed from the first film.
2. It's not as adventurous as the first film.

Overall:
Although not as good as Finding Nemo, this is a very worthy sequel, and is a must watch for any fan of the first film.

Rating:
9/10 (Amazing)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Prior to work on Finding Dory, Disney had planned to make a Finding Nemo sequel without Pixar's involvement, through Circle 7 Animation, a studio Disney announced in 2005 with the intention to make sequels to Pixar properties. However, due to the 2006 acquisition of Pixar by Disney, Circle 7 was shut down by Disney without ever having produced a film. Although it never went into production, a script for the Circle 7 version was uploaded to the official Raindance Film Festival website. It would have involved Nemo's long lost twin brother named Remy, then Marlin gets captured so it is up to Nemo, Remy, and Dory to save him.
2. In July 2012, it was reported that Andrew Stanton was developing a sequel to Finding Nemo, with Victoria Strouse writing the script and a release date scheduled for 2016. However, the same day the news of a potential sequel broke, Stanton posted a message on his personal Twitter calling into question the accuracy of these reports. The message said, "Didn't you all learn from Chicken Little? Everyone calm down. Don't believe everything you read. Nothing to see here now. #skyisnotfalling ." According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter published in August 2012, Ellen DeGeneres was in negotiations to reprise her role of Dory. In September 2012, it was confirmed by Stanton, saying: "What was immediately on the list was writing a second Carter movie. When that went away, everything slid up. I know I'll be accused by more sarcastic people that it's a reaction to Carter not doing well, but only in its timing, but not in its conceit." In February 2013, it was confirmed by the press that Albert Brooks would reprise the role of Marlin in the sequel. In April 2013, Disney announced the sequel, Finding Dory, for November 25, 2015, confirming that DeGeneres and Brooks would be reprising their roles as Dory and Marlin, respectively.
3. In a July 2013 interview with Los Angeles Times, Stanton spoke of the sequel's origin: "There was polite inquiry from Disney [about a Finding Nemo sequel]. I was always 'No sequels, no sequels.' But I had to get on board from a VP standpoint. [Sequels] are part of the necessity of our staying afloat, but we don't want to have to go there for those reasons. We want to go there creatively, so we said [to Disney], 'Can you give us the timeline about when we release them? Because we'd like to release something we actually want to make, and we might not come up with it the year you want it.'"
4. In a 2016 interview Stanton stated how the film's story came to be; "I don't watch my films that often after they're done because I have to watch them so many times before they come out. So about 2010 when we were getting Finding Nemo ready for the 10-year re-release in 3D, it was interesting to watch again after all that time. Something kind of got lodged in the back of my brain and started to sort of stew. I started to think about how easily Dory could get lost and not find Marlin and Nemo again. She basically was in the same state that she was when Marlin found her. I didn't know where she was from. I knew that she had spent most of her youth wandering the ocean alone, and I wanted to know that she could find her new family, if she ever got lost again. It's almost like the parental side of me was worried." Stanton additionally stated: "I knew if I ever said Finding Dory or mentioned a sequel to Finding Nemo out loud, I'd be done, [T]here would be no way I'd be able to put that horse back in the barn. So I kept it very quiet until I knew I had a story that I thought would hold, and that was in early 2012. So I pitched it to John Lasseter and he was all into it. Then I got a writer, and once we had a treatment that we kind of liked, I felt comfortable calling Ellen."
5. Stanton selected Victoria Strouse to write the screenplay. She later said, "It was always collaborative with Andrew, but really the screenwriting was me. Of course, Andrew would do passes, and he and I would brainstorm a lot together and then we would bring it to the group of story artists. People would weigh in and share ideas." She pointed to Dory's forgetfulness as a challenge when writing the script, adding, "You don't realize until you sit down to write a character who can't remember things how integral memory is to absolutely everything we do, and that's what creates a narrative that people can follow. When a main character can't self-reflect and can't tell a story, that character is very difficult to design because she can't really lead. To get her to be able to lead and to get an audience to be able to trust her was the hardest thing to do."
6. The fictional Marine Life Institute depicted extensively in the film is based on the production team's research trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Center and the Vancouver Aquarium. The film's ending was revised after Pixar executives viewed Blackfish, a 2013 documentary film which focuses on the dangers of keeping orca whales in captivity. Initially, some of the characters were to end up in a SeaWorld-like marine park, but the revision gave them an option to leave. On September 18, 2013, it was announced that the film would be pushed back to a June 17, 2016, release. Pixar's The Good Dinosaur was moved to the November 25, 2015, release window to allow more time for production of the film.
7. Angus MacLane was one of the first people to whom Stanton revealed his idea for the sequel. Together, with Bob Peterson, they discussed about different ideas for places Dory would visit during her journey — one of those ideas was the touch pool sequence. Later, during the Brave wrap party, Stanton invited Angus to join him in his first co-directing duty. Stanton described Angus' role as a "jack of all trades", particularly utilizing his experience in animation and story, as well as in production, having created a few short films himself.
8. In August 2015, at Disney's D23 Expo, it was announced that Hayden Rolence would voice Nemo, replacing Alexander Gould from the first film, whose voice had deepened since reaching adulthood (Gould voiced a minor character in the sequel instead). At the D23 expo they also announced that Ed O'Neill would be the voice of Hank.
9. To make the light more realistic, RenderMan was completely re-engineered, its biggest change in 25 years.
10. Finding Dory was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD in late 2016. n addition to the theatrical short Piper, the bonus features also included a short film, titled Marine Life Interviews, featuring interviews with the inhabitants of the Marine Life Institute about their encounters with Dory. It was released on 4K Ultra in 2019.

Description
Lets continue our Disney marathon with the sequel to the 2003 smash, where Dory goes out to search for her family.

In a flashback, Dory, the regal blue tang, gets separated from her parents, Jenny and Charlie, as a child. As she grows up, Dory attempts to search for them, but gradually forgets them due to her short-term memory loss. Later, she joins Marlin the clownfish, looking for Nemo. One year after the events of the first film, Dory is living with Marlin and Nemo on their reef. One day, Dory has a flashback and remembers her parents. She decides to look for them, but her memory problem is an obstacle. She suddenly remembers that they lived at the "Jewel of Morro Bay, California" across the ocean when Nemo mentions the name. Marlin and Nemo accompany Dory on her journey. With the help of Crush, their sea turtle friend, they ride the California Current to California. Upon arrival, they explore a shipwreck full of lost cargo, where Dory accidentally awakens a giant Humboldt squid, who pursues them and almost devours Nemo. They manage to trap the squid in a large shipping container, and Marlin berates Dory for endangering them. Her feelings hurt, Dory travels to the surface to seek help where she is captured by staff members from the trio's nearby destination, the Marine Life Institute. Dory is placed in quarantine and tagged. There she meets a grouchy but well-meaning seven-legged octopus named Hank. Dory's tag marks her for transfer to an aquarium in Cleveland. Hank, who fears being released back into the ocean, agrees to help Dory find her parents in exchange for her tag. In one exhibit, Dory encounters her childhood friend Destiny, a nearsighted whale shark, who used to communicate with Dory through pipes, and Bailey, a beluga whale, who mistakenly believes he has lost his ability to echolocate. Dory subsequently has flashbacks of life with her parents, and struggles to recall details. Marlin and Nemo attempt to rescue Dory. With the help of two lazy California sea lions named Fluke and Rudder and a common loon named Becky, they manage to get into the institute and find her in the pipe system. As Dory continues her search for her parents, will she have to say goodbye to Marlin and Nemo?

Pros:
1. Dory is a great protagonist, and we get to learn l lot more about her.
2. Marlin and Nemo are both great support.
3. Hank, Destiny, Bailey, Jenny, Charlie, Fluke, and Rudder are all likeable and memorable new characters. There's also some neat cameos from Mr. Ray, Crush, and the Tank Gang.
4. Like the first film, there's plenty of well handled comedy.
5. Lots of charming and heartwarming moments.
6. Well handled amount of intensity and suspense.
7. Stellar voice acting.
8. Thomas Newman delivers a score that's just as amazing as his score from the original.
9. Like Toy Story 3 and Monsters University, the animation has received a significant upgrade from it's predecessor, and just like it, it really captures the feel of the underwater world with great character designs, backgrounds, and effects.
10. Great chemistry and development between the characters.
11. The story is very well written, and has a great moral regarding people with disabilities.

Cons:
1. Some plot points are rehashed from the first film.
2. It's not as adventurous as the first film.

Overall:
Although not as good as Finding Nemo, this is a very worthy sequel, and is a must watch for any fan of the first film.

Rating:
9/10 (Amazing)

Production Notes and Trivia:
1. Prior to work on Finding Dory, Disney had planned to make a Finding Nemo sequel without Pixar's involvement, through Circle 7 Animation, a studio Disney announced in 2005 with the intention to make sequels to Pixar properties. However, due to the 2006 acquisition of Pixar by Disney, Circle 7 was shut down by Disney without ever having produced a film. Although it never went into production, a script for the Circle 7 version was uploaded to the official Raindance Film Festival website. It would have involved Nemo's long lost twin brother named Remy, then Marlin gets captured so it is up to Nemo, Remy, and Dory to save him.
2. In July 2012, it was reported that Andrew Stanton was developing a sequel to Finding Nemo, with Victoria Strouse writing the script and a release date scheduled for 2016. However, the same day the news of a potential sequel broke, Stanton posted a message on his personal Twitter calling into question the accuracy of these reports. The message said, "Didn't you all learn from Chicken Little? Everyone calm down. Don't believe everything you read. Nothing to see here now. #skyisnotfalling ." According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter published in August 2012, Ellen DeGeneres was in negotiations to reprise her role of Dory. In September 2012, it was confirmed by Stanton, saying: "What was immediately on the list was writing a second Carter movie. When that went away, everything slid up. I know I'll be accused by more sarcastic people that it's a reaction to Carter not doing well, but only in its timing, but not in its conceit." In February 2013, it was confirmed by the press that Albert Brooks would reprise the role of Marlin in the sequel. In April 2013, Disney announced the sequel, Finding Dory, for November 25, 2015, confirming that DeGeneres and Brooks would be reprising their roles as Dory and Marlin, respectively.
3. In a July 2013 interview with Los Angeles Times, Stanton spoke of the sequel's origin: "There was polite inquiry from Disney [about a Finding Nemo sequel]. I was always 'No sequels, no sequels.' But I had to get on board from a VP standpoint. [Sequels] are part of the necessity of our staying afloat, but we don't want to have to go there for those reasons. We want to go there creatively, so we said [to Disney], 'Can you give us the timeline about when we release them? Because we'd like to release something we actually want to make, and we might not come up with it the year you want it.'"
4. In a 2016 interview Stanton stated how the film's story came to be; "I don't watch my films that often after they're done because I have to watch them so many times before they come out. So about 2010 when we were getting Finding Nemo ready for the 10-year re-release in 3D, it was interesting to watch again after all that time. Something kind of got lodged in the back of my brain and started to sort of stew. I started to think about how easily Dory could get lost and not find Marlin and Nemo again. She basically was in the same state that she was when Marlin found her. I didn't know where she was from. I knew that she had spent most of her youth wandering the ocean alone, and I wanted to know that she could find her new family, if she ever got lost again. It's almost like the parental side of me was worried." Stanton additionally stated: "I knew if I ever said Finding Dory or mentioned a sequel to Finding Nemo out loud, I'd be done, [T]here would be no way I'd be able to put that horse back in the barn. So I kept it very quiet until I knew I had a story that I thought would hold, and that was in early 2012. So I pitched it to John Lasseter and he was all into it. Then I got a writer, and once we had a treatment that we kind of liked, I felt comfortable calling Ellen."
5. Stanton selected Victoria Strouse to write the screenplay. She later said, "It was always collaborative with Andrew, but really the screenwriting was me. Of course, Andrew would do passes, and he and I would brainstorm a lot together and then we would bring it to the group of story artists. People would weigh in and share ideas." She pointed to Dory's forgetfulness as a challenge when writing the script, adding, "You don't realize until you sit down to write a character who can't remember things how integral memory is to absolutely everything we do, and that's what creates a narrative that people can follow. When a main character can't self-reflect and can't tell a story, that character is very difficult to design because she can't really lead. To get her to be able to lead and to get an audience to be able to trust her was the hardest thing to do."
6. The fictional Marine Life Institute depicted extensively in the film is based on the production team's research trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Marine Mammal Center and the Vancouver Aquarium. The film's ending was revised after Pixar executives viewed Blackfish, a 2013 documentary film which focuses on the dangers of keeping orca whales in captivity. Initially, some of the characters were to end up in a SeaWorld-like marine park, but the revision gave them an option to leave. On September 18, 2013, it was announced that the film would be pushed back to a June 17, 2016, release. Pixar's The Good Dinosaur was moved to the November 25, 2015, release window to allow more time for production of the film.
7. Angus MacLane was one of the first people to whom Stanton revealed his idea for the sequel. Together, with Bob Peterson, they discussed about different ideas for places Dory would visit during her journey — one of those ideas was the touch pool sequence. Later, during the Brave wrap party, Stanton invited Angus to join him in his first co-directing duty. Stanton described Angus' role as a "jack of all trades", particularly utilizing his experience in animation and story, as well as in production, having created a few short films himself.
8. In August 2015, at Disney's D23 Expo, it was announced that Hayden Rolence would voice Nemo, replacing Alexander Gould from the first film, whose voice had deepened since reaching adulthood (Gould voiced a minor character in the sequel instead). At the D23 expo they also announced that Ed O'Neill would be the voice of Hank.
9. To make the light more realistic, RenderMan was completely re-engineered, its biggest change in 25 years.
10. Finding Dory was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray (2D and 3D) and DVD in late 2016. n addition to the theatrical short Piper, the bonus features also included a short film, titled Marine Life Interviews, featuring interviews with the inhabitants of the Marine Life Institute about their encounters with Dory. It was released on 4K Ultra in 2019.