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| Some celebrities, a couple of kids and a dolphin float around in the water on the poster for Charles Martin Smith's Dolphin Tale |
Dolphin Tale is the 9th film from Californian director Charles Martin Smith (Air Bud (1997)). It is a family film based on a true story.
In Florida, a boy without a father finds a dolphin on a beach, entangled in a crab case, and helps to rescue it to a marine facility, where the creature and its rehabilitation becomes his main priority.
There's a very fine story at play in Dolphin Tale. A humanistic story of not giving up hope, of living with a disability and of the bond between an animal and a person.
Unfortunately, the writing of Dolphin Tale is all but imaginative, and although the film tackles serious issues, it still feels like it is wrapped in Styrofoam. - I get that the makers have decided that this should be child-friendly and uplifting, but it has gotten the best of them here, because Dolphin Tale, though based on a true story, doesn't feel very real. It feels like a polished Disney Channel-version of reality, where people always have nice hair and walk around in up key lighting and smile with their teeth at all times. (Disney didn't make Dolphin Tale though.) It is written by Karen Janszen (A Walk to Remember (2002)) and Noam Dromi (Road to Hollow (2013), TV-series). Smith's direction of Dolphin Tale is unsure and uninspired.
The boy (Nathan Gamble (The Mist (2007))) mostly acts well, but the girl opposite him (debuting Cozi Zuehlsdorff (Sofia the First (2013-15))) acts poorly and is annoyingly written. Some of this is, of course, Smith as the director's fault.
The adult members of the cast, Harry Connick Jr. (Hope Floats (1998)), Ashley Judd (Tooth Fairy (2010)), Kris Kristofferson (The Motel Life (2012)), Morgan Freeman (Lucky Number Slevin (2006)), Austin Stowell (Whiplash (2014)) and Frances Sternhagen (Misery (1990)), all pass the buck, but neither of them are memorable or get any real space to shine here.
The film's use of 3D is a cheap selling ploy more than anything else, and in light of the film's other deficiencies, bad taste.
SPOILER Dolphin Tale ends with a segment of clips from the real-life dolphin's story, which are moving, but they shouldn't erase the fact that the film before it was far from all it could have been.
The dolphin Winter is the real star of Dolphin Tale, and anyone who loves dolphins should at least take pleasure in the scenes with Winter and her remarkable story.
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Watch the trailer for the movie here
Cost: 37 mil. $
Box office: 95.4 mil. $
= Even Steven
[Dolphin Tale opened #3 in the US, behind the re-release of The Lion King (1994) and Moneyball. In its second week, it climbed to #1 on an extremely fatigued movie weekend with just 13.9 mil. $. It ended up making 72.2 mil. $ in North America (76 % of the total gross). The film was generally well-reviewed in America, and Dolphin Tale 2 (2014) is also already a fact.]
What do you think of Dolphin Tale?
What other movies about dolphins have you seen?
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