Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) is an unhappy, lonely boy. He has a hard time in school and as a result, he has to spend his summer vacation stuck in summer school. His only friend is his cousin Kyle (Austin Stowell) who is about to leave to join the Army. However, everything changes the day that Sawyer meets Winter.
While on his way to school, Sawyer stops off at the beach. There is a man fishing and he notices something beached on the shore. Sawyer goes to investigate and there he finds a badly hurt dolphin. He helps the dolphin as much as he can, until the Clearwater Marine Hospital cavalry shows up, led by Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr) and his daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff). They take the injured dolphin to the Marine Hospital, and Sawyer heads off to school. But, Sawyer can’t concentrate and can’t stop thinking about the dolphin he helped. So he visits the Marine Hospital after school and officially meets Hazel. Hazel is pretty much the anti-Sawyer. She’s bubbly and inquisitive and she and Sawyer become friends. Dr. Clay doesn’t really like outsiders interacting with the injured animals, but Winter (as Hazel named her) bonded with Sawyer when he was helping her on the beach, so Dr. Clay makes an exception.
Now Sawyer finally has something he’s interested in!! He researches dolphins and visits the Marine Hospital every day, eventually not even attending summer school anymore. When his mother Lorraine (Ashley Judd) finds out, she is not happy – until she goes to the Marine School and sees how Winter is helping Sawyer grow. She agrees to let him help at the Marine Hospital and makes a plea to his summer school teacher to allow him to earn his grade by doing practical work. The teacher refuses, but it all works out by the end . . . of course.
Unfortunately, Winter’s tail was so infected that it had to be amputated. This is bad because dolphins use their tails to swim by moving them in an up and down motion. Since Winter has no tail, she moves what is left of it in a side to side motion to swim, which is damaging her spine. The Clearwater Marine Hospital doctors are at a loss as to how to help Winter, and fear that the more damage is caused, the worse her condition will get.
Meanwhile, Sawyer’s cousin Kyle was involved in an explosion. He gets to come home, but he doesn’t want to be around his family. Kyle used to be a swim star, he set several records before graduating from high school, and since the explosion he is unable to move his legs without therapy. It’s while visiting Kyle at the VA Hospital that Sawyer gets a brilliant idea – if people can have prosthetic limbs, why can’t Winter have a prosthetic tail?? Enter Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman), who crafts prosthetic limbs for veterans who have lost their own while on duty. Sawyer convinces Dr. McCarthy to work on fashioning a fake tail for Winter.
Unfortunately, Winter doesn’t like having fake parts on her body. It takes a couple of tries but Sawyer and company never give up!!
I really enjoyed “Dolphin Tale”. Morgan Freeman was great as usual, (when is he not fantastic in a role??) and I really enjoyed the antics of Rufus, a rather enthusiastic pelican that lives at the Marine Hospital. Although it had a running time of nearly two hours, the film didn’t drag and kept my interest the whole time.
Inspired by the true story of Winter, the dolphin who lost her tail, “Dolphin Tale” is a light-hearted drama (I use the term drama loosely) that is an inspiration for the whole family. Of course, the film is in 3D, but in this case it’s kind of nice. When there was a 3D effect of a dolphin jumping, it looked like it was smiling at me and was going to jump out of the screen at me.
