Dolphin Tale

Review by Pete Roche

Paddle-boarding the sugary wake of feel-good ocean drama SOUL SURFER comes DOLPHIN TALE, another outrageously sweet, based-on-actual-events story of recovery and redemption whose titular character loses an appendage in an oceangoing accident.  Only this time the leading lady is not a champion boarder, but a bottlenose dolphin named Winter.

Sawyer Nelson (Nathan Gamble) is an introverted preteen in Clearwater, Florida who hasn’t really come out of his shell since his father walked out on him and (incredibly) his mother (Ashley Judd).  The lethargy only deepens after his role model soldier-cousin (Austin Stowell) ships overseas.  The boy’s grades were already bad; now he’s trudging through English in summer school.