America’s favourite dolphin returns to the screen in Dolphin Tale 2, a sequel as eager to charm audiences as the 2011 original. Again “inspired by true events,” Dolphin Tale 2 provides family-friendly animal fare that should engage tweens and young middle schoolers who dream of rescuing and swimming with dolphins, but won’t scare their little siblings in the audience.
This sequel, again helmed by writer-director Charles Martin Smith, takes place three years after the end of the original Dolphin Tale, in which Winter and her prosthetic tail saved Dr Clay Haskett’s (Harry Connick Jr.) aquarium from closing. Winter’s popularity has turned the Clearwater Marine Aquarium (CMA) into a state-of-the-art rehabilitation centre for marine animals. The aquarium has also become a popular Tampa Bay tourist destination where Winter inspires wounded veterans, children with disabilities and even such celebrities as Soul Surfer Bethany Hamilton, who makes a special visit to the CMA to swim with a fellow amputee.
Sawyer (Nathan Gamble), now 14, also has become famous for his rescue of and work with Winter. Early in the story, Sawyer receives a scholarship to join graduate students on a prestigious semester at sea programme. But doing so would force him to leave Winter and the aquarium for three months. A death in the family, of sorts, complicates Sawyer’s decision: Winter’s companion dolphin, Panama, dies of old age, leaving Winter alone and CMA in violation of animal welfare laws that require aquariums to keep dolphins in pairs.
Thus emerge the movie’s slim but intertwined plotlines: Will the aquarium rescue another dolphin that can be kept in captivity with Winter, and will Sawyer decide to spend a semester at sea or stay in his comfort zone at CMA? The answers might seem predictable, but surprisingly, the dilemmas provide real — if sentimental — moments of tension and drama leading up to the movie’s satisfying conclusion.
Gamble gamely plays Sawyer, the earnest budding marine biologist, as he navigates the tricky waters of adolescent brooding and indecision. The movie even includes a subtle little romance as Sawyer deals with female attention from pretty aquarium volunteers and his precocious best friend, Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff), Clay’s daughter and the aquarium’s resident documentarian.
Laid-back pacing
The gentle pacing of the film is too laid-back at times, particularly in a few overlong underwater swimming scenes that start out lovely but conclude as apparent filler material. But that’s a small quibble with a movie that’s this sweet and cheesy. If you don’t say “awww” when the crew rescues a baby dolphin (and subsequently name her Hope, of course), you’re definitely not the target audience for this movie (and maybe not human).
And if you think the director made up some of the sappier sequences, make sure to stick around for the credits, where documentary footage shows he did base those adorable rescues, releases and swims on real life, including poignant moments of amputee veterans and kids visiting and swimming with Winter.
