After the disappointing experience I had with Minions (2015), I was a bit wary of watching this, but I decided to give it a chance because I at least liked Dory’s character from Finding Nemo (2003).

I went in with low expectations, since I actually found Finding Nemo to be mostly boring aside from characters like Dory or the sea turtles, who provided much needed comic relief.  So I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this movie.  It actually fit my tastes perfectly.

Baby Dory was absolutely precious, from the character design to her voice.  Initially I was worried that the one scene we see of her early on was going to be the only one, but I think the animators made the right call by weaving in adorable flashbacks where we could see more of her throughout the story.

There were a lot of great supporting characters here too.  The sea lions were hilarious, and so were the two whales, particularly the Beluga.  My favorite supporting character by far though had to be Hank.  In fact, he ended up becoming my favorite character overall.

I was a little worried that all the best scenes were contained in the promotional material for this movie, like I feel like they had for Minions, but I am happy to say that ended up not being the case.

I don’t think this is showing in theaters anymore (as usual I have over 15 backlogged entries, most of them being half-written, as life continues to distract me from getting them finished), but if it does still happen to be playing somewhere and if you have the patience for it, there are two after credit scenes that are worth waiting for.  One happens a few minutes into the credits, and the second occurs as soon as the credit roll ends.

Final Thoughts: This one is definitely going into the permanent collection.  There aren’t many films where I anticipate a sequel, but I do hope they make one for Hank.  Not sure what that would look like, but I’m sure it would be wonderful if they make it as well as they did this one.