SEQUEL STAYS AFLOAT
Dolphin Tale 2 is lovely to look at and educational, too,
Dolphin Tale 2 (out of 4) Starring Harry Connick, Jr., Nathan Gamble, Cozi Zuehlsdorff. Co-written and directed by Charles Martin Smith. 107 minutes. At GTA theatres. G.
In the first Dolphin Tale, a certain cetacean was in desperate need of a tail, a prosthetic one.
In the sequel, Winter desperately needs a new companion or risks being sent away from her home and friends at the Clearwater Marine Hospital.
Both films offer familiar faces growing up or getting older, a certain amount of tension but mostly good, clean family fare.
Dolphin Tale 2 takes up pretty much where the last one left off, though a few years have passed and young Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) is offered a great opportunity that involves leaving home.
What should be an easy decision is complicated by the death of Panama, Winter’s long-time pool mate. Along comes a kind but officious U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector (played by director/co-writer Charles Martin Smith) who gives Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.) a tight deadline to find a replacement companion or have Winter sent away to some gosh-awful place far from the ocean.
When a beached dolphin named Mandy is rescued, the audience is all “well, that settles that.” But wait, because if a dolphin can be fixed up and released back into the ocean, it must. It’s another teaching moment in a film that doesn’t shy away from trying to educate its audience.
It’s only in the final throes that we know (as the movie trailer makes plain) that an orphaned baby dolphin named Hope may be the answer to everyone’s prayers.
Hope hasn’t learned enough about living in the ocean from her mother so she’ll never be released back, an- other teaching moment.
But will Hope bond with Winter or reject her for being different? Adults will know but kids are going to spend some uncomfortable moments waiting for the answer.
Along the way, we get some comic relief from Rufus the pelican who bonds with an injured sea turtle named Mavis and a chance to reacquaint ourselves from some familiar faces, including Kris Kristofferson as Clay’s dad, Ashley Judd as Sawyer’s mom and Morgan Freeman as the fin doctor, all of whom seem to be there only because they were in the first one.
And while young Gamble doesn’t get top billing as Sawyer, the film is mostly his and to a lesser extent, Cozi Zuehlsdorff as Clay’s daughter, Hazel, both of whom are wonderfully youthful, though their puppy love friendship is as uncontroversial as if they were brother and sister. Earnest and educational seem to be key to what Smith ( American Graffiti’s memorable Terry the Toad) is trying to accomplish. There’s some lovely underwater cinematography and a few dollops of suspense. But Dolphin Tale 2is mostly an easy, breezy ride that will please younger audiences and their parents with its message of resilience and hope.