'Dolphin Tale 2' Soft and Sickly

Children have poor taste. Unfortunately, as people continue to have children in large numbers, children command the attention and resources of the film industry to a degree unmerited by their lack of sophistication, and so “Air Bud” films and Cartoon Network shows continue to proliferate.

It is with this state of affairs in mind that one must approach Charles Martin Smith’s “Dolphin Tale 2,” which is, needless to say, the first sequel to “Dolphin Tale.” It is not meant to be a good movie, but rather a movie that is written, acted, and filmed to please an audience with undeveloped bodies and still-defective intellects and aesthetics; which is to say, it is a movie that is is meant to make a lot of money on a relatively modest budget (the series’s first installment took in roughly $72 million on an estimated budget of $37 million). By the latter standard, perhaps “Dolphin Tale 2” is a success—only the box office returns will tell. By the former, however, it is an exemplar of the genre of “family movie”: it is not a very good film in any way.

The entire enterprise is so submerged in utter predictability that there is little redeeming to discuss. The plot is a slurry of non-events that are stitched together to reach the required time for a feature-length film. The first “Dolphin Tale” recounts the real-life story of the discovery and rehabilitation of the dolphin Winter, whose damaged tail is amputated and replaced by a specially manufactured prosthetic, providing the weak pun of the title. In “Dolphin Tale 2,” the characters of the first film are reintroduced. Sawyer Nelson (Nathan Gamble), an early adolescent of indeterminate age, is a volunteer at the aquarium-cum-veterinary hospital where Winter lives. When Winter’s companion dolphin Panama dies, Winter enters a phase of depression and lashes out at Sawyer, prompting the aquarium director, Dr. Clay Haskett (Harry Connick, Jr.), to stop him from working with the dolphin. In the meantime, Sawyer has been offered a spot in a semester-long marine biology program at Boston University. In the meantime, a pelican named Rufus gets up to all sorts of zany antics at the aquarium. In the meantime, Hazel (Cozi Zuehlsdorff), another volunteer, develops a crush on Sawyer. In the meantime, Dr. Cameron McCarthy (Morgan Freeman, who seems to act with a certain wry awareness) works on a new prosthetic for Winter. These threads, although they are all resolved, only occasionally converge. It is just one damned thing after another, but the sentimentality of each plot line will doubtless resonate with soft hearts and soft heads.

The cinematography is competent, if middling. It relies heavily on shaky-cam action shots, inspiring in the viewer not an impression of vividness so much as seasickness. Several needless and poorly-executed montages naively recall the worst in ’80s cinema. The sequences of dolphins swimming are resplendent and slick in their digitally-altered luminosity, the best visual greasiness that Hollywood money can buy. A particularly annoying tic is the use of “animal-eye” shots, half-submerging the camera in water with no apparent purpose besides showing that the shot can be done: most of these shots are merely empty frames that are half water and half sky.

Every film does not have to be deep and serious. Cinema is the most democratic medium, and it is often at its best when it puts entertainment in the driver’s seat; this summer’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” comes immediately to mind. Unfortunately, for most audience members, “Dolphin Tale 2” will not even rise to the level of entertaining. Let the unhappy viewer be consoled in by the fact that his dissatisfaction may be taken as a hopeful sign that he has progressed beyond the maturity level of the average American pre-teen.

—Staff writer Jude D. Russo can be reached at russo@college.harvard.edu.