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| ©Disney/DisneyPixar |
Before Finding Dory came onto the movie screen, we first see
a Disney Pixar short film titled Piper, which is based on a baby sandpiper. We
first see a flock of sandpipers go near the sea to peck at the sand to find
food. A mother sandpiper encourages her baby to go with her to find the food, but the
baby refuses at first. When the baby sandpiper joins the flock, she fails to
retreat from the sand and is then drenched in water from the sea water. This leaves the baby
sandpiper scared of going back into the water, but then she soon discovers she is standing on 3
hermit crabs that are walking toward the sea. The baby sandpiper then notices
how the hermit crabs dig deep into the sand to prevent them from being buffeted
by the tide. The baby sandpiper copies what the hermit crabs do and discovers
the beauty of the underwater world and also discovers the food. She then becomes
skilled at discovering food for the flock of sandpipers. The short film ends
with the mother sandpiper looking at her baby foraging food into one pile by
the sea.
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| ©Disney/DisneyPixar |
We then see the movie Finding Dory. The movie starts off
with Dory as a baby who suffers from short-term memory loss. Her mother and
father try to help Dory remember things, but Dory's mind seems to wander elsewhere. Dory then somehow ends up lost in the
ocean. We then discover, over a few years, how Dory ends up knocking into
Marlin, the clownfish who at the time was chasing after the boat that captured
his son Nemo.
It then changes to the present day which shows it is 1 years
later after the incident from the first film. We see Dory start to remember
that she has a family –a mother and a father – as she says that they lived at
“the Jewel of Morro Bay, California”. After hearing about a speech on migration
from the eagle ray Mr. Ray, Dory’s memories start to come back to her about her
family and she suddenly starts to swim super fast and says that she needs to
find her family. Marlin at first is reluctant to go across the ocean to help
Dory find her family, but with encouragement from Nemo, he then agrees to help
Dory. We then see the trio with the sea turtles with help from Crush, riding
the ocean current to California. After saying their goodbyes to the sea
turtles, the trio then swim near a shipwreck. As they are swimming, Dory starts
to call her parents out loud, but crabs then tell her to keep quiet. We find
out there is a giant squid there that attacks the trio and nearly kills Nemo.
Marlin is then angry at Dory and tells her that she must wait at a spot as
forgetting things is all that she is good at. Hurt at these words, Dory wanders
off only to hear a noise above the surface, and she swims to the top of the surface. She is then taken by volunteers who
work at a nearby place called Marine Life Institute. As Marlin and Nemo get
help from 2 sea lions, Fluke and Rudder, Dory is then put under Quarantine in the Institute, and
is also tagged on her one fin. She then meets an octopus by the name of Hank,
who escaped from his own tank. Hank lost a tentacle
in the past, which causes Dory to refer to him as a “septopus”. He notices
Dory’s tag and asks her for the tag as he wants to go to an aquarium in
Cleveland. They both then make a deal that if Hank helps Dory find her parents,
he can take her tag so he can go to Cleveland. Hank explains that due to a past
traumatic experience, he would rather live in an aquarium where he can be in a
safe enclosure. Hank takes Dory to a map of the Marine Life Institute and asks
where her family are situated, and Dory remembers that her family was in the
Open Ocean section of the Institute. Along the way, Dory sees a bucket with the
name “Destiny” on it. Dory thinks she knows the word, so she jumps into the bucket and sees fish in this
bucket – but is unaware that they are all dead fish. The human lady that is taking
the bucket throws Dory into a tank and it is here that Dory is reunited with
her childhood friend Destiny, who is a short-sighted whale shark. We find out
that Destiny and Dory used to speak “whale” to each other through the pipe system back when Dory was a baby. Dory also meets a beluga whale named Bailey,
who believes he cannot echolocate due to a concussion. Dory does eventually get to the Open Ocean
section, but before she does, her and Hank end up at the “Kid Zone” where fish and
starfish are in a tank and children can pick up the fish and touch them – this does
show that fish in real life actually are stressed out from being handled
vigorously. During this time, Dory remembers her parents singing to her the song "Just Keep Swimming", and the song is how Dory and Hank manage to stop the children from touching them - one child puts his finger on Hank, and Hank releases ink into the water, which ends up making the water black and scaring off the children.
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| ©Disney/DisneyPixar |
When Hank and Dory make it to the Open Ocean section, Dory says
goodbye to Hank, who receives the tag from Dory. Dory finds her home by
following the shells on the ground as Dory remembers when she was a baby, her parents told
her to always follow the shells if she ever got lost. Dory discovers that her
parents are not at the home she grew up in, and she also remembers how she left her
parents: She overheard her parents talking about her, and she saw a purple
shell and wanted to give it to her mother as she knew her mother loved the
purple shells. As Dory tried to get the shell, she was pulled into the current
in the water and was pulled into the ocean.
After speaking to a crab, Dory finds
out that all the blue tangs are all being moved to Cleveland, which means her parents
should be by the Quarantine section.
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| ©Disney/DisneyPixar |
During this time, Marlin and Nemo ask the
sea lions to help them get into the Marine Life Institute. The sea lions then
call on Becky, a common loon who is dimwitted, and the sea lions tell Marlin
to imprint with Becky so that Becky would recognise him in the future. As Becky
flies into the Institute, she is sidetracked by popcorn which was on the ground
and drops Marlin and Nemo – who are in a bucket of water – into a tree. Marlin
tries to call Becky, but then pushes the bucket to the end of the branch, which
leads him and Nemo flying in the air and the two end up in a small tank with a toy
windup fish. Dory on the other hand, is stuck in the pipes as she swam through the pipe system and has forgotten the directions which was given to her by the crab, and is then heard by
Destiny, who asks Bailey to echolocate and find Dory.
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| ©Disney/DisneyPixar |
At first, Bailey cannot echolocate, but
then he starts to echolocate and finds Dory and also helps her to try and
escape out of the pipes. Marline, Nemo and Dory are then reunited in the pipe
system. The trio then head for the Quarantine section and they manage to find
the tank where the blue tang fish are. Before the trio reach the tank of blue
tang fish, they fall into a bucket of cleaning water, but are then saved by
Hank who puts them into the tank of blue tang fish. The blue tang fish explain
to Dory that her parents went to the Quarantine when Dory was sucked through
the pipe system to look for her, but are not there anymore as this was years ago,
which could mean that Dory’s parents are gone. While Dory is shocked by this
information, Hank attempts to help Marlin, Dory and Nemo escape, but in the
haste, Hank couldn’t retrieve Marlin and Nemo, and also the Marine Life staff
capture Hank, who drops Dory into a drain, which leads her back into the ocean.
Dory then forgets who she is looking for in the ocean, but then comes across shells.
Dory then remembers to follow the shells, which leads to another home – home to
where her parents have been staying since Dory was sucked through the pipe
system. After reuniting with her parents, Dory’s mother Jenny explains that she
and Charlie – Dory’s father – have been placing a trail of shells everyday in
the hope’s that Dory would find them one day. Jenny also explained that since
she and Charlie couldn’t find Dory in the Quarantine section, they both escaped
the Institute because they knew Dory must be in the ocean. After hearing this
and happy to be with her family, Dory remembers that she needs to rescue her
other family – Marlin and Nemo. Dory asks Destiny and Bailey to help them
rescue Marlin and Nemo. Both Destiny and Bailey escape from their tanks and
jump into the big wide ocean. At first though, Destiny is scared of the ocean
as there are walls everywhere, but Bailey tells Destiny that “there are no
walls in the ocean” – which is a clever way of showing the cruelty behind
captivity. Dory has a plan to stop the truck which Marlin and Nemo are in, with
the help from the cute and adorable sea otter’s who sit on the highway to distract
the traffic.
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| ©Disney/DisneyPixar |
Destiny then throws Dory into the hands of an otter who then takes
her to the truck. Once inside the truck, Dory helps Marlin and Nemo escape into
the ocean, but during this, Dory is left behind. She then asks Hank to help
her, who was also in the truck after being captured by the Marine Life staff.
Dory then convinces Hank that the ocean is not so bad, which Hank then agrees
to help Dory escape. Dory and Hank work together to hijack the truck and to
drive the truck into the ocean, which also releases the other fish who were inside the truck. After being reunited with everyone, Dory, Marlin, Nemo, Hank,
Bailey, Destiny and her parents swim back to the Great Barrier Reef. The movie
ends off with Hank being a substitute teacher for the school as Mr. Ray is
migrating. Bailey and Destiny also help the class with Hank. Dory then swims
just to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef to look out at the view, as Marlin also joins Dory to look at the view as Marlin said earlier in the film why can't they - Nemo, Marlin and Dory - just swim to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef and just look at the view.
During the post-credits scene, we see the fish from the dentist’s
tank from the first movie still trapped in the bags they were in. They all
manage to make their way to California, where they are supposedly “rescued” by
the volunteers from the Marine Life Institute.
Before I end off, there is something I noticed in this movie: There was a focus point on captivity. When Destiny was scared that there are walls in the ocean, Bailey says that "there are no walls in the ocean". This is true as animals can swim for miles and miles in the ocean as the ocean is huge. In captivity however, animals only have the limited space available in their tanks.It could feel like a cage to an animal.
Another focus point in the movie was when the children picked up marine life in the one tank. Fish do in fact get stressed when so many hands are in the water, and sometimes unfortunately, children do tend to not care too much for handling animals. In the movie, children stuck their hands in the water and grabbed fish they found. Dory and Hank had to try and hide away from all the hands in the water. Fish and star fish were terrified being grabbed on and being taken out of the water.
What impressed me was that what you see in the film, does indeed happen in the real world, and some of it is sad. Animals just want to be free. Some animals however,do need to be rehabilitated and some animals who cannot survive in the wild, are then put into an aquarium or rehabilitation center.
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| A drawing of Dory as a baby and as an adult. The drawing is done by the blogger. |
I retrieved most of my images from searching on Google.
Thank you to everyone who read this review,
I hope you enjoyed reading this movie review.
