Home Entertainment: ‘Finding Dory’ review

Finding Dory DVD review: Pixar’s only big-screen release of 2016 heads to the small screen. Could this be the greatest animated sequel of all time?

Finding Dory DVD review

Finding Dory DVD review continues below.
2016 has been an absolutely belting year for Disney. Things kicked off rather nicely for the studio at Easter, releasing Zootropolis at a time of year that they hadn’t chosen for quite some time. The film was a massive success, and with their second feature of the year, Finding Dory, hitting at the peak of summer through their subsidiary Pixar, they managed to take things one step further.

Finding Dory had the unenviable task of not only following on from Zootropolis, but also the superb Pixar original Finding Nemo thirteen years prior. ‘Dory’ follows the Ellen Degeneres character who sets out on a mission to find herself by locating her parents. Her travels take her to the Marine Life Institute in California, a conservatory that houses diverse ocean species, and hopefully her long-lost mother and father.

Finding Dory DVD review

Truth be told, I enjoyed Finding Dory a lot more that its predecessor. It has all the ingredients of a great Pixar or Disney movie, from its wonderful characters, some returning from the original, and some fantastic new ones, including Ed O’Neill‘s central role of Hank the ‘Septopus’, and Eugene Levy and Diane Keaton as Dory’s parents Charlie and Jenny. Also look out for a very comedic turn from Idris Elba and Dominic West as two bolshy, though extremely helpful sea lions, Fluke and Rudder.

The story doesn’t feel contrived or that the studio are milking a perfectly told stand-alone movie for more cash – in fact, it develops the characters even more and somehow manages to literally take the fish out of water and into the human world for the majority of the movie.

Finding Dory DVD review

As well as a solid story and great cast, Finding Dory also has some stunning animation, the technology coming on leaps and bounds in the 13 years between the two movies. Andrew Stanton’s direction from his own screenplay (with Victoria Strouse, Bob Peterson and co-director Angus MacLane) is honed to perfection, each and every scene seamless in its excellence and an absolute joy to watch from start to finish.

This is definitely how you do sequels.

Extras:

Finding Dory iTunes extras screen shot

There’s a great set of bonus material on the disc, including a stand-out ten-minute featurette on Hank the ‘Septopus’. ‘The Octopus That Nearly Broke Pixar’ focusses in on the colossal task of bringing the character of Hank to the big screen. There’s also ‘What Were We Talking About’, a brief look into the construction of the narrative, ‘Skating & Sketching With Jason Deemer’, a character art director and his journey in working for Pixar, a great, entertaining little feature called ‘Character Carpool’, another named ‘Animation & Acting’ and tons more.

There are also seven deleted scenes, a selection of trailers and some ‘Living Aquariums’ screen savers, though also Piper, the supporting short for the theatrical run and another, previously unseen short named ‘Marine Life Interviews’. So yes, there’s a generous helping of bonus stuff to give you more insight into this magnificent movie.

Finding Dory is available on Digital Download, Blu-Ray and DVD now.