‘Finding Dory’ review: ‘One of the best of the year’

Stanton skilfully weaves in many heart-tugging moments, particularly as Dory’s journey nears its end. At such a pace, “Finding Dory” should top $100 million at the weekend box office and could potentially pass “Toy Story 3” for Pixar’s biggest opening.

Finding Dory swims into theaters June 17, 2016.

Finding Dory brings back the characters made popular by its predecessor: Dory, a forgetful Pacific royal blue tang (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres); Marlin, a clownfish and concerned father (Albert Brooks); and Nemo, Marlin’s son (now voiced by Hayden Rolence, who replaces Alexander Gould). She may be listening to you one minute. Albert Brooks returns as the voice of her friend Marlin, while Ty Burrell, Ed O’Neill, Diane Keaton, Idris Elba, and Eugene Levy voice new characters.

The tone of “Dory”, written and directed, as was “Nemo”, by Andew Stanton (Angus MacLane co-directed) is plaintive – Where, oh where, have those parents gone?

Pixar continues its tradition of including a short in front of the feature with the delightful “Piper”, about a baby sand piper learning how to dig for clams.

Just as J.J. Abrams buttressed the story of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to the structure of Star Wars: A New Hope, this sequel feels like a carbon copy of 2003’s Finding Nemo – complete with a long distance quest, a family divided and the hero trapped, but trying to escape. Dory grows up a lost and confused orphan. She remembers her parents, recalling what they looked like and a snippet of advice they gave to her. The memories don’t come flooding back, exactly, but she knows what she has to do: travel across the ocean and find them.

So much of the dazzle of “Finding Nemo” was the colorful richness of its aquatic life: sharks in recovery, pelicans interested in dentistry, Willem Dafoe’s battle-scarred striped fish.

Finding Nemo, of course, deserves enormous credit for building the foundation for Dory’s popularity now. The action takes place nearly entirely jumping between tanks at the institute (subbed in by Pixar for an originally planned SeaWorld-like location) and in a number of less exotic (and less creative) scampers on land.

Both the charm and challenges of the new film rest on the slippery scales of the befuddled blue heroine Dory.