Before I watched it, I thought that this was just another movie about animals....nothing special. But after watching it, I realized that this was a truly heart warming movie that reached deep down to your heart. Watching this movie makes you appreciate marine life and, especially the beauty of dolphins and their relationship with us humans. For me, the best scene of the entire movie is the ending where Hope & Winter starts to accept each other....and then following that, the real footage of Hope & Mandy. Coupled with Gavin DeGraw's song which really goes along with the scenes, the last part will make you shed tears.All in all, this is a great and inspiring family themed movie, portraying good values.

Dolphin Tale 2Now what's the point of recouping an injured dolphin if it's just going to end up in a can of tuna?Unfortunately, the aquatic rehab centre in this drama doesn't see it that way.When the USDA threatens to remove the tailless Winter from the Clearwater Aquarium if she isn't paired with another dolphin in 30-days, Sawyer (Nathan Gamble), Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff) and Dr. Haskett (Harry Connick, Jr.) attempt to acclimate a new dolphin into Winter's tank.But when Winter's stump startles the newbie, the team must cast a prosthetic tail in order to retain her.Inspired by the clinic that treated the real Winter, this sequel is essentially a retelling of the first with tacked on secondary stories involving assorted injured animals.While Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman reprise their roles, the teens from the first are replaced with bad look-alikes.What's more, who knew dolphins were so shallow? Red Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

I remember watching the first one, and remember being surprised at the bad reviews it got. I know this one will not win hardcore critics' hearts either, and might even empathize with them, but yet, for some, this is a mainstream movie that needs to be watched at the local multiplex, preferably with family.For those who have not seen the 1st one, what I'm about to cover might constitute spoiler territory for that one. For the rest, it should be OK. Since the struggle in making Winter swim has been dispensed with in the first movie, this movie handles the operations of the CWA, which rescues, rehabilitates and releases animals needing its care, in that order. It is a nice subject to dwell on, further enhanced by giving the supporting characters quite a bit of room to breath, while keeping a few others cardboard-like (notice the disservice done to the love lives of all the leads, and the plastic caricatures we are presented of characters inhabited by Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd and Kris Kristofferson - I can understand them wanting to be a part of this project, and I can understand the makers wanting the PG rating, but you can push your envelope just a tad in the interest of keeping things down to earth, no pun intended, since this is mostly aquatic). Which is not to say I'm nitpicking, since the antics of Mavis, Mandy, Rufus, Hope and Winter keep everyone entertained almost throughout that the afterthoughts that are the rest just remain that - afterthoughts. However, to me, that is the difference between a movie that just about does its job, and one that treads into the realm of TV movie territory, esp. one that suits Lifetime channel the best, or in this case, even Disney. A missed opportunity of sorts. There are some life lessons that are spread throughout, and that is where I think watching the movie with younger members of the family might just be the way to go, since there could be so many inspiring conversations one could have, about healing, hope, faith, willpower, success and the like, all of which this movie serves to highlight not just in anecdotal lip-service form.The number of times the various leads refer to the dolphins as wild animals, though appropriate, and kinda guidance-providing, belies the fact of how their characters treated the same animals with more empathy during the first outing. It's almost as if someone told them to be more politically correct, and they ended up toeing the line. One thing I did not notice in the first outing was that this one has been competently helmed by Charles Martin Smith, the 4th 'Untouchable', him of the infamy 'what happened to that dude who was in 'The Untouchables' while everyone else got famous'. I kinda dug the way he chose to let the story do the talking, and has shot this like he shot its predecessor, in a laid-back, unhurried fashion, that lets every frame linger on just that much longer, favoring long takes and conversations. Which is why his decisions wrt certain key supporting characters seem surprising in retrospect.The performances of the teen leads are muted, but serviceable. The veterans are picking up paychecks, but they're capable of so much more. As a friend of mine causally remarked, Ashley Judd was better served in 'Divergent' than by being in this one. Not their fault though - I'm happy they agreed to reprise their roles instead of asking stand-ins to do so.For some strange reason, they've not shot this on 3D, and have elected to release in plan 2D. While I am NOT a fan of wearing glasses throughout the running length of a movie, I thought that 3D enhanced the viewing pleasure of the first one, and this unexplained preference of 1 format over the other, while the surcharge can get some footfalls, escapes me still.All in all, worth that trek to the cinema.

. . . can be subtitled SOUL DOLPHIN, for the cameo appearances of SOUL SURFER heroine Bethany Hamilton (among many reasons), can Winter-the-Dolphin's next outing HEAVEN IS FOR DOLPHINS be very far off? DOLPHIN TALE 2 makes it crystal clear that these bottle-nose flicks need to come out every couple years to underwrite the paint jobs that Clearwater, FL's corrosive sea air and U.S. animal regulations require. Hopefully, this next spray paint fund-raiser will be a little more upbeat than this "Winter of my discontent," to quote another perennial film headliner also stricken with scoliosis, RICHARD III. Parents of little ones and PETA types should be forewarned that DOLPHIN TALE 2 includes cannibalistic scenes of fairly large fish being EATEN ALIVE by even bigger "fish," as Morgan Freeman's Dr. McCarthy character would say. Perhaps these gastronomical horrors were actually filmed in Quebec, and the AHAD--which gave DT2 its Seal of Approval #04440--could not afford to send a rep way up there, thus missing the atrocities. So why did Alice Cooper catch so much flack for eating a bird on stage?