Dolphin Tale

In the interest of full disclosure and maintaining my journalistic integrity (stop laughing), I must reveal Warner Brothers (the studio behind Dolphin Tale) served me, and the entire crowd at the movie when I saw it, the most DELICIOUS cookies I have ever eaten! It didn't effect this review, but it did put me in a good mood. Well played Warner Brothers. Well played.

"Inspired" by the true story, Nathan Gamble stars as Sawyer - a young boy in Clearwater, FL who has to attend summer school because he is more interested in focusing on his projects and insular word instead of applying his abilities and intelligence to school work. It is a horrible development in a series of horrible developments as the kid also has watched his beloved cousin, Kyle (Austin Stowell), go off to the Middle East after joining the military to pay for his Olympic swim team training (Which is just ridiculous. A championship swimmer can get a FAT scholarship to a big time swim school like Stanford or UCLA, but I digress).

While riding his bike to school one day, Sawyer comes across a fisherman who has found a young, injured dolphin. The kid does what he can to help, aides with the rescue, and later wanders over to the marine life sanctuary where he finds the dolphin, Winter (played by Winter herself), is facing a battle with life or death that turns for the worse when Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick, Jr.) discovers her tail is too injured and the way she is swimming will cause major medical problems.

When Winter's tail is amputated for her own good, how will this fighting dolphin survive?

Director Charles Martin Smith (Terry "The Toad" Fields in American Graffiti) saves Dolphin Tale from becoming a maudlin affair with more sappiness than a Vermont forest during maple syrup season. Every time the movie starts to move towards becoming a parody of itself and the people in it, Smith knows to pull back.

Morgan Freeman, as Dr. McCarthy, gives us all of the usual Morgan Freeman lovable bombast, acerbic reactions and all around cool, but Smith presents it in the right doses. We smile and welcome Freeman, instead of rolling our eyes because he makes only a few, well placed appearances in the movie. It's a great example of loving something in small doses that would be overkill and a big turn off in larger doses (I try to use the same tactic on dates and job interviews).

Smith also presents the story of the war vet and local hero who has returned home to face the rebuilding of his life and training how to cope with his injuries (along with how Winter might inspire him), but makes it a small part of the story, so it adds flavor in a hint of a taste, instead of dominating and taking the story off in another direction. It's a predictable sub-plot, but one we can appreciate.

Ultimately, Dolphin Tale is about the dolphin and the kids. Gamble does a great job playing a kid. He has the right amounts of skepticism, wonder, belief and shyness that makes you feel like he is a real kid, instead of playing an idealized version of one for the movie. Meanwhile, Smith should have had a talk with Cozi Zuehlsdorff, who plays Hazel - Dr. Haskett's daughter who becomes Sawyer's pal. Overly precocious is the phrase that comes to mind, although annoyingly precocious also applies at times.

Dolphin Tale is not a movie for the youngest of kids, who might be excited to see the cute dolphin. There is an open discussion about putting down Winter for her own good, which could bring up memories of Old Yeller for parents, and I was disappointed how writers Karen Janszen and Noam Dromi portrayed Sawyer's summer school teacher as a villain. Given the facts of what we see in the movie, he's actually being very fair, but becomes a bogeyman for Sawyer's Mom (Ashley Judd) to denigrate.

I have no reasonable, artistic justification why Dolphin Tale would be presented in 3D (which is my nice way of saying Warner Brothers is just jacking you and your wallet by tossing in a couple 3D scenes to charge a higher ticket price if you get suckered into it), so go 2D and spend the extra cash on some popcorn, or those awesome cookies (if you can find them).

Dolphin Tale is rated PG for some mild thematic elements