"Winter´s story, told by herself"

Title: Dolphin Tale

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama, Family

Director: Charles Martin Smith

Writer: Karen Janszen, Noam Dromi

Runtime: 113min

Cast: Nathan Gamble, Cozi Zuelhsdorff, Harry Connick Jr., Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Austin Stowell, Kris Kristofferson 

Produc.: Alcon Entertainment, Arc Productions

Budget: $37 million approx.

In Dolphin Tale, Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) is a child who after meeting a bottle-nose dolphin stranded on a beach, he communicates with a team of rescuers. The team arrives on the scene and transfers it to an aquarium, where the animal must lose its tail to survive. Sawyer will soon feel more and more attuned to the dolphin and will be thereby assisting Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.), along with his daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff), in its care. Within a short time, Sawyer and the now named Winter, will have created a very strong bond.

Dolphin Tale could be defined as one of those cute little movies that are for the enjoyment of the whole family. In this case, while one becomes aware of the circumstances which once surrounded Winter, after the cetacean was rescued in December of 2005 off the coast of Florida.  

The film uses some characters that although never existed in real life, helped to create the drama that we see on the scene. 

The first one we know is Sawyer, a dejected boy and who in an emotional level, has not been able to cope in the best of ways, either with his mother and in terms of his studies. So we are facing a worrying child and which is in need of something that excites him. This "something" will come up just when one morning, a fisherman (Richard Libertini) sees Sawyer from the beach (where they are man and dolphin) and asks him if by any chance hasn´t he got a cell phone to call for help. Sawyer, who does have one, inmmediately goes down to help him and soon releases the dolphin from the crab trap. Not much later, rescuers arrive at the scene and she is taken to there facilities. Then, when the action has moved from a first, secondary location, to the most relevant place of the plot, all ingredients have begun to combine for us to enjoy a story, mostly intended to reach the smaller public.

So Sawyer is curious to know what became of the dolphin, which leads him to venture to a part of the aquarium that is restricted to the public. This is when we meet Rufus, a pelican who lives in the aquarium and that is in charge of putting a certain amount of humor to the narrative.

Then Sawyer meets Hazel, with whom he will share many moments and who will be his best friend (except for Winter, of course) throughout the movie. As expected, Sawyer manages to please Hazel´s father, who allows him to collaborate with Winter. Thus the link between Sawyer and the staff of the aquarium and marine life becomes very narrow, except that Sawyer tries to keep it hidden from his mother, who eventually ends up knowing and giving in.

In Dolphin Tale its director cares not to serve us all the information in a row, showing us some very general aspects of Kyle´s (Austin Stowell) going and coming back from war. Kyle, Sawyer´s cousin and a figure who the kid admires, has to go to fight, in spite of the anguish this causes to Sawyer, to later come back wounded, to occupy a wheelchair.

The rest of the film is developed with a Winter who has had her tail amputee for her own health. It is now that Sawyer uses the collaboration of Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman) -who he knows through his crippled cousin-, an expert in the development of prosthetic limbs. Sawyer presents him his friend´s case, to what the man says he will see what he can do, but making no promises about it. Obviously, Cameron will be able to give much more than he had thought. Us, on the other hand, will discover how it is given the relationship between the kid and the dolphin, while Cameron dedicates himself to getting Winter´s new tail, and up to the moment of the truth, where we learn whether it was or not worth the waiting.

Furthermore, Dolphin Tale covers important issues such as the meaning of friendship or of the personal effort to achieve what we want, and that never hurts to translate into the language of cinema.

My rating: 6/10

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