Dolphin Tale Review

In reviewing Dolphin Tale, it may not be as popular or interesting of a blog post, but that doesn’t bother me that much. I went to see it this past weekend as was really impressed with it. So much so that I felt like writing this blog post to promote it in a sense. September and October aren’t very busy movie months and so there’s a good chance that you have either never heard of it or have not seen it and that is why I am writing this because I think it is certainly a movie worth watching. Great, inspiring, clean family films are becoming few and far between it seems, so a movie like this is fairly rare. There isn’t any language, sex, nudity, or violence in this. Now if you are the type of person that likes these kinds of movies that are vulgar or have hard core action violence then maybe Dolphin Tale isn’t for you. Now I do enjoy quite the variety of movies, so I’m not knocking on any movie genre when I say that, but I am one who does enjoy inspirational family movies, so I enjoyed Dolphin Tale.

Let’s go back in time for a second. Dolphin Tale came out on September 23^rd, 2011. It opened up in third place in the box office behind Lion King and Moneyball with around 19M. However, good word of mouth propelled it ahead of both of them and took the number one spot in its second weekend. It ended its box office run with a total that was just north of 70M, which is good considering it was a September release that only opened to 19M.

Dolphin Tale is based on a true story. It’s about a young boy named Sawyer Nelson who lives with his mom only and isn’t much of a social person at all. He also struggles with school and is forced to start summer school of which he isn’t excited about at all. One day as he is on his bike riding past the beach he runs into a dolphin that is caught in a trap. After freeing the dolphin, the dolphin is taken to the local animal hospital where his tail has to be amputated and he struggles to survive. Morgan Freeman is the biggest name in this movie and does quite well in his role like he usually does. The other actors in this movie aren’t huge name actors, although they have shown up here and there. The lead kid, Nathan Gamble, appeared in the Dark Knight as Jim Gordon’s son and Harry Connick Jr and Ashley Judd appear in things periodically. As a whole, the movie was casted very well and I thought the acting was all great. The story flowed rather well and the cinematography with the animals was good.

The message in this movie was great. It’s a story about not giving up, especially when times get hard. We can learn a lot from Winter the dolphin and the other characters in this movie. I don’t know if it’s a movie that I will buy and watch over and over and I don’t know if it is one that would’ve made my top 10 from last year, but nonetheless it is a great film. I highly recommend you go on over to your local redbox and pick it up. You won’t regret it. I give this movie a 9 out 10.