Review of Dolphin Tale, starring Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr. and Nathan Gamble.
When a film is advertised: “from the producers of The Blind Side,” the ad is telling you straight up what the producers are after – your heartstrings. They want you to leave the movie feeling good and inspired, and they’ll manipulate you to get there.
Not that Dolphin Tale, the story of a rescued dolphin who loses her tail (the title includes a homonym), befriends an 11-year-old boy and gets a new artificial tail as a result isn’t touching or inspiring. Animal lovers – especially the young ones – will leave the movie genuinely moved by the “inspired by true life events.”
In fact, the best thing about the movie is Winter the bottlenose dolphin, who plays herself. To do that, director Charles Martin Smith and team (we’ll assume including trained handlers) had to remove the tail to make the scenes genuine. Watching a tail-less dolphin swim is both a curiosity and when you think about it, an inspiration. Even better, just like The Blind Side, Dolphin Tale’s closing credits give us some amateur video of real-life events – including seeing real kids who have lost limbs in Winter’s pool with her.
Dolphin Tale covers how Winter got there, although one wonders if it’s completely true. The movie is intended for families, so we are given a syrupy story that is toned down for kids starring people who are seemingly too good to be true. The humans are pretty much stock characters: 11-year-old Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) is the quiet kid who struggles in school but finds his calling through his new friend Winter. Ashley Judd is the concerned single mom who wants to be sure Sawyer’s doing the right thing. Harry Connick, Jr. is the heroic veterinarian and single dad who fights for Winter’s right to stay at the aquarium (maybe because they’re the best-looking people in the film, the writers have Connick and Judd have a brief flirtation but oddly, never have it go anywhere). Morgan Freeman plays the genius with prosthetics who works with “the fish” to get it to swim again (Batman fans will recognize he’s essentially playing Lucius Fox all over again for a wetter hero). And Kris Kristofferson plays the wise grandfather who is almost always on his sailboat giving out advice so sage and so learned you wonder if he’s even real – like the Ghost of Dolphin Movies Past.
Perhaps there is no better example of how much the story is simplified for kids than in the story of Sawyer’s cousin – injured at war and placed in the hospital where Sawyer gets the idea for Winter’s tail. The young man graduates high school and joins the Army. He is sent “away” before being hurt in “an explosion.” His real-life story – no doubt heroic – is completely homogenized to protect kids from the cold hard facts of the real world. It seems ok to show kids how he learns to live with a disability, but not ok to tell them there are actual places called Afghanistanor Iraq, or why he wanted to go there in the first place.
Come to think of it, we see Winter washed up on shore tied up in a trap, but we don’t see her actually get caught.
Kids will marvel, skeptical adults may wonder if everything they’re seeing happened exactly that way or not. Certainly it’s something you can enjoy with your kid – or through your kid’s eyes, but your adult eyes might be better served by The True Story of Dolphin Tale that we can hope someone will produce.
Before long, this critic will be able to put together a list of the movies most unnecessarily in 3D. Dolphin Tale can go right at the top. It opens with Winter and friends frolicking in the deep – a scene that if photographed traditionally, could have been beautiful. Instead, you’re left wondering if you’re seeing real dolphins or CGI effects – and wondering if you’re seeing the real depths of the ocean or an animated undersea world. That scene lasts about a minute. Then the “wonders of 3D” are used to show Winter in a tank for 90 minutes. Other than an extraneous scene where a remote-controlled toy helicopter runs amok in the aquarium, the 3D has no impact whatsoever.
Genre/s: Family
Release Date/s: September 23, 2011 (Showtimes & Tickets)
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
Production Company: Alcon Entertainment, Paradise F.X. Corporation
CAST and CREW FOR Dolphin Tale
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Harry Connick Jr., Kris Kristofferson, Ray McKinnon, Nathan Gamble and Rus Blackwell.
Directed By: Charles Martin Smith
Written By: Karen Janszen and Naomi Drom
Dolphin Tale Movie poster and images VIEW ALL