News location:

Canberra Today 11°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review: Dolphin Tale (PG) ? ? ?

POTTING for crustaceans is a selective commercial fishing method that normally takes only the target species. But after one dolphin entangled itself in a pot line off the Florida coast, it became a film star.

Charles Martin Smith’s film about the rescue of Winter combines veterinary science and engineering of prosthetic replacements in a feel-good story that comfortably fits into a list of holiday movies.

It is true that a privately-funded commercial marine animal rescue team amputated Winter’s tail to prevent the spread of infection. It is true that a surgeon at a clinic rehabilitating military casualties developed a polymer gel material now widely used to protect stumps from abrasion by prosthetic devices.

But writers Karen Janszon and Noam Dromi have open slather in telling the fictional story of Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) and Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff) and their respective single parents (Ashley Judd and Harry Connick Jr). Kidz rule, OK?

There’s a strong infusion of sentimentality arising not only from Sawyer’s exclusion from peer-group interactivity until Winter’s presence provides an overnight epiphany, but also from the rehabilitation of his champion swimmer cousin wounded by an IED in a Middle Eastern country at the clinic run by kindly Dr McCarthy (Morgan Freeman un-stretched by the demands of the role).

At all cinemas

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews