27. Finding Dory

Finding Dory had to prove that Ellen DeGeneres’ Dory, who was the surprise breakout star of the original Finding Nemo, could hold a film on her own, lest it instead demonstrate that her ditzy amnesiac personality worked best in a supporting role. For whatever it’s worth, the sequel is pretty successful in making Dory the star of her own story, and it turns out she can still deliver an hour and a half’s worth of laugh-out-loud bits and still find a truly profound conclusion waiting for her at the end of it all. The problem with Finding Dory is that its final act is such a chaotic, nonsensical, obnoxious culmination of everything the movie introduces that it can barely get a handle on itself by the time it slams its foot on the brakes and just kind of…stops. Pixar also can’t quite stick the landing here as it struggles to reconcile its secretly sentient aquatic world with a human one in which somehow the presence of sea creatures causing havoc and mayhem on the surface world doesn’t make headlines, and Finding Dory’s third act is one of the most damning examples of the studio having more ideas than it can concisely bring together in the end. — KS