{"id":32815,"date":"2014-09-17T19:47:51","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T23:47:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=32815"},"modified":"2014-09-17T19:47:51","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T23:47:51","slug":"dolphin-tale-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2014\/09\/dolphin-tale-2\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDolphin Tale 2\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2011\u2019s \u201cDolphin Tale\u201d told the story of Winter, a rescued dolphin who was missing her tail. The humans around her worked tirelessly to help, and in the process they learned to help themselves. Needless to say, it was a super cheesy movie, the sort of cutesy inspirational fluff that adults have seen countless times (including \u201cAir Bud,\u201d by the same director) but kids probably enjoy when it\u2019s new to them. Now comes \u201cDolphin Tale 2,\u201d which is pretty much more of the same.<\/p>\n

The conflicts this time are a little less urgent. Winter\u2019s tank-mate, a 40-year-old dolphin named Panama, passes away. Government regulations require captive female dolphins like Winter to be paired with other females, and her human friends have 30 days to find her a new buddy or else their aquatic center will lose its star attraction and they\u2019ll lose their muse.<\/p>\n

Winter can\u2019t be paired up with just any female dolphin. The center is technically a rehab facility, so anything that\u2019s healthy enough to release back into the ocean is out. It also can\u2019t be one that\u2019s freaked out by her prosthetic tail. Or one that might attack her. Or one that she might attack. I know there are legitimate reasons for being picky, but I can\u2019t help but think that the humans worry a little too much about indulging the animals. You won\u2019t find the police chiefs in buddy cop movies worrying so much about potential partners being compatible.<\/p>\n

The human cast remains about the same. You\u2019ve got Winter\u2019s teenage handler Sawyer (Nathan Gamble) and his supportive mother Lorraine (Ashley Judd). Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick Jr.) runs the aquatic center with his daughter Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff) and his father Reed (Kris Kristofferson). And Morgan Freeman is back as a prosthetics developer who serves the all-important function of saying things in Morgan Freeman\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s comedy is forgettable at best. The film loves its gags where people get splashed or fall into water. It also expects us to laugh at the antics of a pesky pelican named Rufus. Actually, we\u2019re not even supposed to laugh at his antics, we\u2019re supposed to laugh at him for just showing up. I\u2019m sure the animal trainers for this movie worked really hard on Rufus, but he isn\u2019t inherently funny.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of drama for the sake of drama. Dr. Clay and the kids get in a huge fight over whether to release a healthy dolphin or pair her up with Winter (Hazel argues her point with an annoying \u201cscream and then run away\u201d approach followed by an even more annoying \u201cmature\u201d approach). Sawyer might go on a three-month study abroad program, but how can he leave with Winter in trouble? Dr. Clay somehow has to keep the business alive with investors and the government breathing down his neck. Losing Panama causes Winter to go berserk: she won\u2019t eat, she injures Sawyer, and she once again rejects her prosthetic tail, rehashing the central conflict of the first movie. There\u2019s a storyline about the team rescuing a turtle that never really goes anywhere and teases of a romance between Sawyer and Hazel that never really go anywhere. All this is to distract us from the fact that the search for a new companion for Winter just isn\u2019t that interesting.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t imagine people getting much out of \u201cDolphin Tale 2\u201d unless they really like dolphins or marine biology. To be fair, I can see the appeal of the animal and science-centric scenes and I suppose the emphasis on hard work is a good thing, especially for kids. But anybody who has seen one of these inspirational animal movies before is going to know exactly where the story is going. Therefore, the target audience for the film is kids who are too young to have ever seen an inspirational animal movie before. In fact, if they\u2019ve seen the first, slightly better \u201cDolphin Tale,\u201d that alone might make them too jaded.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One and a Half Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cDolphin Tale 2\u201d is rated PG for some mild thematic elements. Its running time is 107 minutes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 2011\u2019s \u201cDolphin Tale\u201d told the story of Winter, a rescued dolphin who was missing her tail. The humans around her worked tirelessly to help, and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}