Where Dolphin Tale was able to succeed as an inspirational story existed purely within the relationship between Sawyer and Winter. The film does have traditional children's film cliches about the aquarium closing and profit focused business tycoons, but thankfully these cliches are sporadic and don't take away a tremendous amount of focus from Sawyer and Winter. You're able to experience a genuine and growing sense of adoration between the boy and the dolphin without the normal children's film villains being used as a catalyst to their friendship. Nearly all the characters in the film are kind and understanding and don't try to interfere, but rather encourage, Sawyer and Winter's relationship. This is a refreshing change from most children's movies that are filled with evil but purposeless caricatures meant only to create conflict and tension. Sadly, this is where the authenticity of Dolphin Tale ends.
Thematically, the film tries to draw a parallel between Sawyer's cousin Kyle and the tragedy of Winter. Both Winter and Kyle are portrayed as innocent and noble creatures who lose their ability to be mobile due to an injury caused my mankind. They also both struggle to accept the circumstances of their injuries and healing; Winter rejects her prosthetic tail while Kyle refuses to confront his family. The problem with this parallel lies within the theme of violated innocence. The forced comparison between Winter the dolphin and Kyle, a soldier injured in Iraq, depends upon a specific type of outlook when it comes to soldiers who participate in the war effort. As an audience, we're expected by default to equate the dolphin with Kyle in order to deliver the full emotional impact during the climax, meaning we are supposed to view them both as noble innocent creatures violated by man made destructive forces. If you don't share this viewpoint about U.S. soldiers, than the climax showing Winter's full recovery is severely weakened. I'm trying not to write this as a political statement, but one about film making. Movies that depend on certain specific cultural perspectives to deliver emotions are inherently weak and will effectively be lost in translation across time and cultures.
Another problem with Dolphin Tale was its inclusion of a lot of goofy non sequitur kid humor, which is typical of a lot of children's media in general. The worst offending scene involved a miniature helicopter that started chaotically flying all over the aquarium while accompanied by random animations and music. The scene added nothing to the story or character development and drastically interrupted the pace of the film. Not only that, but it's not clear why the film needed this type of filler in the first place. At an hour and fifty two minutes the movie already ran far longer than most family films do, so it would be interesting to hear why the director decided to include such a scene. Perhaps it was to interject a little bit of humor into an otherwise bleak first half, but no one in the theater laughed.
The "Why Do I Read IMDB Comments" Section:
Many posters on the board for this film are claiming that casting Morgan Freeman as the inventor of the artificial dolphin fin is a product of Hollywood's reverse racism plot to increase diversity in films. This is because the real-life inventor of the film is white. Now, if you asked these people why the race of this particular character is really important to a movie that has absolutely no racial issue components, I think the reason for why this "miscasting" is such a problem for them would become abundantly clear. In the meantime, these same types of posters are complaining about Mr. Freeman calling the dolphin a fish. "How can he be so dumb?" they say. I can only sigh.
