Film Reviews

Dolphin Tale

• Rating:
• Director: Charles Martin Smith
• Starring: Harry Connick Jr.
• Details: US / 113mins (G).

With its life-affirming values, sentimentality and making no apologies for tugging at the heartsrtings, you'd be forgiven for thinking Dolphin Tale is a Disney movie, a cosy Saturday afternoon kids movie. It's all these (bar the Disney factor) but it can be a little dull.
Inspired by a true story, Dolphin Tale concerns itself with eleven-year-old Sawyer (Gamble), a straight F student whose single mother (Judd) has enroled in summer school to help his grades. Sawyer's gloomy attitude lifts when he discovers a dolphin entangled in a net on the beach; cutting the dolphin loose, she is taken to a marine hospital to be looked after kindly Clay (Connick Jr.) and daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff). However, when Clay has no other option but to amputate the dolphin's (now called Winter) tail because of infection, Sawyer turns to Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Freeman), a specialist in designing prostethic legs for war veterans...
It's sweet and innocent and you'd have to have a heart of stone to hate it but there's not enough going on here to keep the bloated running time busy. Co-written by Karen Janszen, who has experience with the child/animal story after penning Free Willy 2 and Duma, the story knows what its doing in working hard to find a ET-like connnection between Sawyer and Winter. There is one lovely Big Blue type sequence where boy and dolphin swim in the moonlight and there's a big deal made of Sawyer being the only one who Winter allows to feed her but it can't make the connection click.
Strangely, the subplots have more importance that the main narrative. Sawyer's cousin and father figure, Kyle (Austin Stowell), is just back from fighting overseas and his leg is in a brace. His determination to overcome this disability mirrors Winter's but its pushed to the background. Winter's story also inspires children with disability all over the country but this development only turns up late in the day. It's hard to ignore that these two subplots should have been the main one and would have made for a stronger story.
Sweet and positive it may be, Dolphin Tale is a little low on excitement.

Review by Gavin Burke