‘Finding Dory’ is yet another triumphant flick by Pixar

Above, Tom Tangney interviews Michael Stocker, the supervising animator of “Finding Dory.”

Pixar does it again.

“Finding Dory” is yet another smart, funny, and gorgeously animated movie that’s psychologically rich and emotionally resonant. In other words, you’re gonna laugh a lot and be moved to tears.

Yes, it’s manipulative as hell but it’s for such a good cause that you won’t mind a bit.

“Finding Dory” is something of a sequel to “Finding Nemo,” the charming 13-year-old Pixar film about a cute little fish (Nemo) being reunited, after much travail, with his worrywart father Marlin.

Dory, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, is the little blue tang fish that tagged along in that search. Her key character trait is that she suffers from short-term memory loss, something that is mostly played for laughs in the original film.

In this sequel, rather than providing comic relief to someone else’s story, Dory gets center stage. She gets a heart-wrenching back story, an adventure every bit as harrowing as Nemo’s, and a profound life lesson or two along the way.

But, crucially, Pixar doesn’t stint on the humor either.

“I suffer from short-term memory loss. It runs in my family. At least, I think it does.”

This is tricky territory. Dory’s disability is treated seriously and sympathetically throughout, but it’s also the butt of some light humor, made palatable by the fact that it’s mostly self-inflicted. Dory is self-aware enough that the cracks almost come off as self-deprecating.

What is so touching about this story is that we find out that before we ever met Dory in “Finding Nemo” she’d suddenly and tragically lost track of her parents. Given her memory deficit, she has no conscious memory of even missing them, until one day she bumps her head and a flash of a memory floats to the surface.

The rest of the movie consists of Dory’s desperate efforts at finding and hopefully reuniting with her parents.

Along the way, she encounters plenty of other sea creatures who need her help every bit as much as she needs theirs. Crucially, they all have their own private hurdles to clear — a shark with bad eyesight, a whale with faulty echolocation, and an octopus who’s just plain grumpy. It turns out we all have our crosses to bear, not just Dory.

At its most profound, the movie even grapples with the notion of a loved one’s death and the sense of loneliness and abandonment that often accompanies it.

Thankfully, all this profundity is leavened by big doses of humor and not a few chase scenes (probably a few too many.) And rest assured there is a happy ending but it’s a happiness that’s rich and well-earned.