This is topic Dolphin Tale (2011) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.


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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 10-18-2011, 10:14 PM:
 
They made a big deal on the poster about "From the studio and producers of THE BLIND SIDE." That's marketing hooey for you. As if the studio makes any difference these days.

Anyway, this is an enjoyable if somewhat hokey family film, "inspired by" (which translates to "contains the bare bones of") the true story of a dolphin which was rescued from a crab trap line, lost its tail, was rehabilitated with a prosthetic tail, and is now apparently bringing in scads of money to its aquarium home via a website which is promoted in the movie.

From what I can tell, almost all of the story in the film -- the kid, the girl, the dad, the cousin, the crazy doctor, the "Save Winter Day" rally, the big relay race at the end -- was all added to spice things up. (At least, not one of those things are mentioned in the website, which details the rehab of the dolphin pretty extensively.) The actual rehab story was apparently too straightforward and/or not tear-jerking enough to draw in the audience.

Having said all that -- the movie is interesting, although quite predictable. The underwater photography is top-notch. The 3-D is pretty unnecessary, but we had way larger crowds to our 3-D shows than the 2-D ones. Morgan Freeman gives his usual cranky-old-guy performance. Ashley Judd, in the "concerned mother" role, is still very easy on the eyes. The two kid actors give pretty good performances. The real star of course is the dolphin, which is definitely cute and steals the show.

A nice added touch for me was the use of a song from the Doobie Brothers -- it's the title tune from their excellent new album, "World Gone Crazy," available now at your favorite store.

Overall I would give it a 2.75 out of 5 stars.
 

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Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-18-2011, 11:15 PM:
 
When people start splitting stars into quarters, that's when they really have to think long and hard about if the movie really deserved what they are rating it.
 

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 10-18-2011, 11:59 PM:
 
It was exactly what I expect and want from a "family" movie. It pleasant story told reasonably well without descending into the typical potty humor or slapstick antics. I thought it was very cool they used the real dolphin rather than a bunch of cgi trickery.

It was also nice to see a nice family film be well received by audiences. Although the gross is just a fraction of the big animated kids movies, it's much better than average for live action family film. And it's shown some decent legs.
 

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Posted by Jeremy Jorgenson (Member # 2989) on 10-30-2011, 04:31 AM:
 

quote: Mike Blakesley

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the website

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