Dolphin Tale (2011)

Is it too wrong that I grade children’s films on the same scale that I do adult films? I don’t think it is, but sometimes, there are kid’s films that are adored that I just cannot stand, because they use so many clichés and just do not hold my interest. Is it wrong to despise The Polar Express because it isn’t The Godfather, or am I giving too much hate to children’s films? As much as I despise this fact, I am still legally a child, so I have a little more reasoning to do so. But either way, I am here to talk about the reason I have been talking about this. Dolphin Tale, based off of the true story from 2005 where a dolphin was found with a damaged tail and was given a prosthetic, is one of the single most overrated movies since The Polar Express in 2005. A lot of people were actually pretty taken away with this movie, and I do not know why. The acting is cheesy, the directing is sub-par, and the writing, while not terrible, is the same thing every single Hollywood hack could churn out. Now I need to actually talk about the story a little bit here. A young secluded boy named Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) is going to summer school one day where he finds an injured bottlenose dolphin, Winter, trapped in a crap trap. The authorities come, and put the animal in a reserve run by Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.) and his daughter (Cozi Zuehlsdorff…wait, what?), but his tail is killing him so they cut it off. So he can one day swim again, they employ Lucius Fox, no, sorry, Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman, who was just making gadgets for dolphins in his off time in the break between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises where he makes them for Batman) to make a tail. And that’s it. My biggest problem with this film is that it never changes. There is no conflict, no change in pace. The entire film just goes at the same speed and there truly is no conflict in this film. There are times where I excuse it, usually during character pieces where we follow one person, but even then, there are changes of pace, conflict, and just at the very least something worth staying interested for. Because this entire film, I wasn’t angry, or jaded, or bitter, I was just bored. I could guess the entire movie within thirty minutes, I could check every point and detail of the main plot. I even guessed a number LOWER than the number of montages in this movie. When I underestimate the number of montages in your film and I already guess two, we have a major problem here. And before I go, I have another thing I want to rant about. At the end of the movie, they show footage of the actual people interacting with the dolphin, and I HATE THAT! That was the only major problem I saw with 127 Hours, it was one of the many problems I had with Soul Surfer, and it is a problem I have with every film. Even if it is based off of a true story, we don’t need to see the actual people at the end, unless they’re doing what they do in this movie and have the dolphin play the dolphin in the film. Unless they are in the film as someone in the film, don’t have them in the film. Have them in the bonus features on the DVD, because if someone cares enough, they can watch it. I did not/do not care, and it was nothing but a burden to me.
4/10