Morgan Freeman's role in "Dolphin Tale 2" is a little, but only a little, more than an extended cameo. I was relieved to see that he must not have wasted too much time making the film. This relief was one of the only things I liked about the movie.
The film is inoffensive enough, and younger kids are bound to enjoy it, but when there have been other, better films that they're bound to enjoy so much more, I have to wonder: what's the point? For most adults (including me), the film is too sickly sweet in a way that relentlessly permeates the whole thing. Rather than limiting itself to telling a story and hoping that the story will inspire emotion in its audience, the film spends the entire runtime telling the audience exactly how they should feel. Practically half the movie was made up of reaction shots that were blatant in their attempts to manipulate the viewers' emotions. If something happened that we were supposed to find cute, you can bet that there will be at least five shots of various characters also finding that thing cute, as if we couldn't figure it out on our own. The same goes for any other emotion the audience is meant to feel. I picked up on this crutch when I saw the film's trailer, and hoped that the actual film would be more subtle, but that was not to be.
Another mistake was making the film's central character a kid who can't act. My complaints from the last paragraph would still be there, but could have been mitigated if I had been able to get invested in the story the film was trying to tell. Nothing can make that harder than putting a kid who can't act in the central role. The role isn't even that demanding. There's not much range required. But, much like the film, the kid's emotions are so forced that I could never forget that I was watching someone trying to act. Not for a second did I believe I was watching an actual character.
Sometimes movies surprise me. I love nothing more than the times I'm expecting to dislike a movie, but it ends up becoming a new favorite. Other times, the films I don't expect much from end up being even worse than I'd feared. This was one of those times.
D
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