Pearl of the Film: There's No Place Like Home
In a great big wide ocean, there is truly no place like home. For home is where we begin. The imprints upon our newborn selves last forever.
I've forgotten many of my childhood details, but remember the feel and fun of my family and our home.
Not all childhood homes are happy. The imprints leave many spending lifetimes trying to run away from the negative memories of the past. Others spend their lives trying to find their way back to their happy, protected and safe space of their childhood home.
Indeed the early emotional imprints steers the directional course for our lives. The emotional waves are markers in our being that guide our way home.
There are so many habitats, possibilities and places to set our anchor and call home. As varied by climates, countries, counties, zip codes, houses, huts, size to a box on the street or a little fishbowl on the shelf.
Where is your true home?
Does it lie in a place? We cling to yet can easily lose our homes to natural disasters, poor financial decisions and a myriad of other reasons.
Does it lie with persons?
It certainly can. When I was in the process of redefining my home address for the 100th time, it was most certainly where my heart was. My heart is with my family. That's home to me no matter where we are. There's people we adopt as our family. There's a recognition, connection, understanding and acceptance that runs beyond friendship and into unconditional love and well, feels like family.
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| Off, Off, Off, loved these guys |
However, truly being at home is even a deeper feeling.
A connection, a belonging, an unconditional acceptance, a state of peace within your being. If you can't find that in others or in a place then you, like Dory, have to find that feeling within yourself while searching for your family.
The feeling of home doesn't become harmonious until your family, place and self are made whole.
Woa, that was deep. My college psych memories were totally just triggered.
This has everything and nothing to do with Finding Dory.
A year after Marlin meets Dory and they travel the ocean to find Nemo, we find them in their daily routine. They've accepted each other as family. In a scene with the anemone guppies, Dory's way long term memory is triggered with a thought - where is my family? (She utters this in passing in Finding Nemo and serves as the premise for this film).
In a flash suddenly we are off on our next cross oceanic adventure to find Dory's family. Dory is trying desperately to work against herself to keep her overly faulty memory alive. The markers along the way serving as a memory trail which Dory instinctively follows in her unique lovable root for her type way.
Bit by bit we piece together Dory's childhood.
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| Meet Jenny and Charlie, Dory's Folks |
Oh, how I relate to her parents.
In what's an incredible picture of resiliency and self reliance we see Dory's rather lonely journey in the great wide ocean.
She survives for years by herself, searching for something that she can't quite recall.
Dory being all alone in the ocean was the inspiration behind diving into her backstory for this sequel.
Indeed, Finding Dory does a masterful job in dramatizing Dory's childhood loneliness and wrestling with her short comings. It's a touching sequence watching young Dory searching the ocean for family and failing. She does not fit in with other schools of fish and just keeps swimming. Nor can she stop to settle until she finds home. Her memory lapses into fear.
Like Dory, we are often alone in this world. That is, until we find our squad who not just gets us but sees the true beauty in our unique take on the world.
Enter Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo and a school of new characters Hank (Ed O'Neil), Bailey (Ty Burrell), Destiny (Kaitlin Olsen) and others who have to act like Dory in order to her.
When the new friends enter the picture, is when the original Finding Nemo magic hits, the film comes alive and the adventure really sets in.
Finding Dory answers all the questions it asks and truly reminds you just how precious our loved ones are. Its very entertaining to see the pieces of our beloved blue fish come start to make sense, like how she speaks whale.
We can forget everything else but we remember the love.
In the end (SPOILER ALERT) Dory fulfills her lifelong personal quest and finds her home within herself, her family and her adopted family.
Mommas Pearls Meter 3 Pearls
"Finding Dory" Rated PG
View Trailer
Finding Dory reunites the friendly-but-forgetful blue tang fish with her loved ones, and everyone learns a few things about the true meaning of family along the way. The all-new big-screen adventure takes moviegoers back to the extraordinary underwater world of "Finding Nemo."
Still images courtesy of Disney.
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Copyright © 2016 Cynthia Litman. All Rights Reserved.
Disclosure: All opinions and reviews expressed are thoroughly my own and are in no way connected with Disney. I did not receive monetary compensation for this post. However, my daughter and I were fortunate to receive advance screening passes for which I am very grateful.
That said, I'm excited to host a local MomTime Movie Event for "Finding Dory" which is not affiliated with Disney and will feature local "Under the Sea" businesses. All family's are welcome!